Page 121 - Arabian Studies (V)

The Yemeni Poet Al-Zubayri Ill
(b) The reality, on the contrary, is that they are taking up the cry for the
unity of the populace, a unity safe and sound, based upon guarantees of its
permanence in the future without squalls.
(c) Those who place their faith in sectionalism arc the very persons who
defend the barriers and discriminations that divide them from the rest of
the groups and classes of the populace, insisting that they be distinct from
the populace and set apart from it by political and social rights—as if not
disposed to accept that they be numbered among its sons or be on the same
human plane as its humanity.120
id) This arrogant attitude is the scctionalist attitude and the thing most
dangerous to the Hashimites and their future, whether they live in the
Yemen or in any other Arab country.
(e) No Arab populace accepts the deification of one family of it, or its
being kept distinct from it by any (special) right whatsoever.
(/) The Egyptian Revolution is not a sectionalist revolution121 because the
populace of Egypt is, without exception, the furthest removed of populaces
from the sectionalism (deriving from difference in) birth. [27] From the
outset it rejected the existence in Egypt of a class distinguished from the
populace (by privilege) like the Pashas and Feudalists.122
(g) When it (the Revolution) put its programme into practice it did not
eliminate the Pashas in their capacity as Egyptians, but only the barriers
and distinctions (of privilege that used to raise them over the level of the
populace.
(h) It (the Revolution) did, in my view a good turn to the future of these
Pashas and warded off the resentments of the populace from them.
(/) Nevertheless they did have the possibility of doing themselves a (still)
better turn than this had they forestalled the Revolution by demolishing
with their own hands, those barriers that used to keep them apart from the
populace.

Al-Badr Muhammad b. Ism a 7/ al-Amir
Zubayri makes great play with the person of the celebrated twelfth/
eighteenth century scholar al-Badr Muhammad b. IsmaTl b. Salah
al-Amir al-Khawlanl, then al-San‘am, defined by al-Shawkanl an
imam mujaddid, but he brazenly twists history into anti-Imamic
polemic. This gave certain Republican writers the inspiration to
publish a contentious biography, Ibn al-Amir and his era: a picture
of the struggle of the Yemeni populace.™ The main author, it is
alleged, was Qasim Ghalib Ahmad, now deceased, a ShafiT, a man
of poor reputation and a pronounced chip on the shoulder. He is
the author of a book on suffering and torture in Hajjah prison124
much of which, other former prisoners there tell me, is fabrication.
Al-Amlr’s Dlwan125 has been printed, so, with this and other Zaydl
biographies, one can easily assess the extent which Qasim Ghalib