Islam and the state in South Yemen: the uneasy coexistence

Abstract

This study will examine the present situation of Islam, the government's religious policy, and its implications for the country's political system and society. Unfortunately, the PDRY remains by and large closed to Western scholars and what we do not know about Islam there far exceeds what we do know, reducing some answers to speculation. Moreover, much of the information we do have on this topic, including on non-regime actors such as religious activists, comes exclusively from government sources. Among the regime's key stated goals has been the transformation of society into a new 'rational, socialist' one, and the creation of a 'new Yemeni man'. One of the most difficult dilemmas facing the regime in trying to implement its plans has been how to deal with Islam. The first few years after independence in 1967 were marked by a violent campaign by the National Liberation Front (NLF) against the country's religious establishment, although the intensity may have varied by region. It was apparently most virulent in the Hadramawt, where ferment against the status quo had long been a factor, and where clerics and others with ascriptive religious status were intimately bound with the existing social, political, and economic hierarchy.2 There - and probably elsewhere to a lesser extent - NLF - inspired intifada-s ('uprisings') resulted in the public humiliation, torture, and killing of numerous clerics.3 While no systematic studies have been undertaken that would indicate to what extent and how permanently the religious hierarchy was changed, the persistence of traditional marriage patterns and of tribal loyalties would suggest only slow change in this area as well.4 In conjunction with such personal attacks, in 1970 the regime nationalized all awqaf (religious trusts), which had contributed to the clerics' independence and influence in society. Since then, the state has paid the clerics' salaries and has sought to channel all funds for mosques from foreign sources through a government ministry.