Two Yemeni leading women activists under fire of Islamists as " not good Muslims"

By Nasser Arrabyee, 24/01/2012

Yemen Islamists changed their minds about the activists who mainly  led the  one-year protests for change and establishing the modern and civil State, the  dream of a lot Yemenis.

Influential Islamists,now, campaign against these activists as kafers,(infidels), agents, and  traitors, which are words that might endanger the lives of these activists in a conservative and un-knowledgeably religious country like Yemen.

At the top of the list of these activists    being targeted day and night nowadays  by extremists come Tawakul Karman, the Nobel prize winner for 2011, and Bushra Al Maktari, another woman activist and one of leaders of  the anti-regime protests in the  southern central city of Taiz.

The inciting  campaigns are being launched in the squares, mosques, schools, houses and the  social media like facebook, twitter and you tube.

The best and  most lenient  of these campaigns talk about putting these activists on trial for charges of trying to convert  to another religion or blasphemy. 

And the worst and harshest campaigns talk about killing these activists as enemies of Allah without being tried.  

Killing without trial seems to be  the easiest way for the brain-washed young people who  believe they would get married  to beautiful wives in paradise  if they  get  killed while killing kafers, enemies of Allah.

Sheikh Ali Abdul Majid Al Zandani, one of the sons of  Sheikh Abdul Majid Al Zandani, who is wanted by US and UN for terror charges, said today January,23, 2012, that Tawakul Karman had converted to a new religion, other than Islam, which is very dangerous accusation.

" today I have not any doubt that she is calling for overturning the Islam and replacing it with a new religion," said Al Zandani, the son in a statement published in local media.

Earlier in the week,  Ms Karman said in a televised interview that "Islam is a source of inspiration not a source of legislation".

Commenting on this Al Zandani, the son, said " I was extremely shocked to hear her saying this."

"She is making the Muslem equals to the kafer," he wondered.

Al Zandani, the father,who is influential and spiritual leader in the Islamist party,Islah,  last March went to the square of protests at the gate of Sanaa university and delivered  a rhetoric speech in which he told the protesters that they had  discovered the thing that he did not discover in his life to establish the Islamic Caliphate. 

And he said that  the protesters deserve an invention patent for that discovery of protesting to overthrow the regime.

For Ms Bushra Al Maktari, the campaign against her is happening more in Taiz where she is based.

The Member of Parliament of the Islamist party, Islah, Abdullah Ahmed Ali, leads the campaign against Ms Al Maktari and other activists like the sarcastic writer Fekri Kasem.

The MP Ali, who is also a mosque speaker in Taiz, led last Sunday tens of extremists outside his mosque, Al Noor, with some of them carrying banners condemning the activists as atheists and infidels.

" Yemen of wisdom and faith will never be a country for atheism" one of the banners read.

"Our country will be a cemetery for blasphemists"   another banner read.

The Islamist leader, Abdullah Ahmed Ali was using a loudspeaker and shouting to the people to come  and join the protests saying Allah is here Allah is here.

"Be with the scholars and do  not be with the agents" he was telling people through his loudspeaker.

 The Salafi demonstrators were demanding that Bushra and Fekri and others be put on trial for charges of blasphemy.

Earlier Bushra Al Maktari wrote a lengthy article titled " first year of revolution" in which she strongly criticized the Islamists for stealing the revolution and conspiring with the traditional forces, tribesmen and military, against the project of establishing the civil and modern state.

In the article, she was talking about Allah, the God, as the helper of the protesters and where there is no help to the protesters, she says Allah is not there.

For example, in her poetic article she said Allah was not present in Khedar, referring to a place outside  the capital Sanaa where Bushra and hundreds of demonstrators spent one night during their walking March from Taiz to Sanaa last December.

No one helped them at all in the villages of Khedar  as she said, they could not even get in the mosque for sleeping. So, she said Allah was not in Khedar , the phrase that extremist Islamists considered as blasphemy.
 
The political analyst Najeeb Ghallab defended Bushra Al Maktari as a freedom fighter and more believing in Allah than those accused her of blasphemy.

"Bushra was believing in Allah much more than those, when she wrote that article," said Ghallab.