Page 119 - Arabian Studies (V)

The Yemeni Poet Al-Zubayri 109

it) The contest will revolve around this major leading issue—that of
divine right to govern the populace.
(w) Who is to possess this right? Who is better entitled to it?
(v) Is there to be a class of mankind chosen by Heaven to rule?
(>v) Is it to be permitted that there remain in the Yemen a sectarian"1
faction ruling another faction till eternity?
(x) This is the major issue of the future—around it will revolve future
battles and events, and from it will develop many other issues. The Arab
and international powers will exploit these whether we will or no, and the
Yemen will be exposed to perils without end.
(y) If Yemenis wish to avert all these frightening possibilities from their
country, to preserve its independence, sovereignty and unity and keep its
name on the map, let them efface this superstition calling itself a sacrosanct
right to rule possessed by a specific section of people and let them extend
equal opportunities for governing to all sections of the populace.
(z) That is the straight clear truth. I do not speak of it from partisanship
for one section of Yemenis as apart from another. I speak of it only from
desire for the unity, freedom and independence of the populace as a whole.
[23]
10. A menace also to the Hashimites
It may be said, or it may occur to mind at the first glance, that abolition of
the sectarian Imamate would be to the disadvantage and contrary to the
interests of the Hashimites alone.
(a) But this is a fallacious theory, for no menace, present or future,
threatens the Hashimites as does the menace of the Imamate. Each Imam
arises in one single Hashimite family, and to him it seems that his oppo­
nents and rivals are the prominent men in the Hashimite families only. So,
from the outset, he tries to rid himself of them before any others. This on
one hand—while on another, the entire populace feels that all the Hashim­
ite families are an arrogant class distinct from the populace and detached
from it as if they were not of the populace in any way—on the contrary
indeed, as if they were alien to it and intruding on it. Now, if distinctiveness
was, in the ages of ignorance, a privilege for specially distinguished stocks,
it will, in the future, constitute a great menace to these stocks and rouse the
aversion of the populace to them, partisanship in it against them, and (lead)
it to stigmatise them as reactionaries."2
(b) Consequently, as generations go by, they will become isolated from the
populace, as if they were a foreign community within it, not an (integral)
part of it. After that no power will be found on the face of the earth
capable of subjugating the populace to an insignificant minority for ever.
I24]
(c) This is the result, inevitably to be expected, of the complications of the
menace of the Imamate and from preserving the Hashimite families in
(their) privilege over the populace.
id) Yet, were the noble Hashimite families to become aware of these
realities, attend to warding off this menace, and their liberals to head the
opposition to the Imamic concept, the cry for a republic and the extension