Page 118 - Arabian Studies (V)

108 Arabian Studies V
government and attacking the great Hashimites105 more than it has attacked
any other group.
(/?) From one angle so it appears, but when, from another angle, we
examine the sentiments of the greatest force among the populace, i.e., the
tribes, those of them who farm—and those who do not, then indeed we
find them harbouring a general sense of bitterness against the inhabitants
of the towns as a whole, considering the townsfolk, as they maintain, to be
sharing with the Imams in the benefits and gains of government, and
responsible for its outrages and misdeeds.106
(0 Hence we perceive the distinguishing marks of this ill-omened rupture
between Shafifis and Zaydis, Hashimis and Qahtanls, then between tribes
and townsfolk.
(/) A sequence of fragmentation! All of it emanating from the feeling of
these ‘popular’ groups as a whole that they have no right to govern them­
selves and that there is a special chosen group alone that enjoys this right in
perpetuity—the right of the sacrosanct Imamate!
(k) In the past the Yemeni populace lived with the conviction that the
Imamate [21] was divinely bestowed upon a particular chosen stock, and
only a small number of exceptional individuals was stirred to contest this
frightful sacro-sanctity—whom the swords of the Imams despatched,
ridding themselves of them as ‘criminals, heretics107 and enemies of God’.
(/) This apart, there was the long bitter struggle between the Imams them­
selves in the Upper Yemen, one against another, then between them and the
kings and rulers of the other districts.
(aw) Where the populace was concerned, during most phases of history it
was (merely) an onlooker, sizing up the muscles of the contenders for
! government and domination over it, as if it were heaps of debris and rubble
of antique statues quarrelled over by robber hands.
(w) Except, today, now that the populace has developed, stocxl up for
itself, revolted, and been stirred up by the bright revolutionary (war)-cry of
Arab nationalism (‘Urubah), its morrow cannot possibly be like its yester­
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a day, nor its future like its past, and from now onwards its role will not be
that of onlooker.
(o) It inevitably must define its attitude regarding each problem that
concerns it and demand each one of its rights.
(p) It would be absurd for it to continue in the belief that, from all
eternity, the choice of Heaven has fallen upon a number of families which,
age upon age, take their turn of the divine right to rule.
(q) The Shafi‘1 majority108 of the populace will not continue to accept
that it be governed by a sectarian military rule expressing neither its will nor
its doctrine.
[22]
(r) Nor will the Zaydiyyah continue subject and submissive to a ‘racist’109
government that looks down (on them), aspiring to live forever pampered
by Heaven and Earth.
(s) Nay indeed—the populace will not assent to its morrow being like its yes­
terday. It must inevitably assume its full role in the contest for this is the way of
life—whosoever urges it to the contrary will be bereft of sense and success.110

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