Religious Schools in Yemen
Apparently in Yemen its illegal to teach that the leader of the state should be a just Hashemite, which is an orthadox view, but its legal to teach that the world should be dominated by a global caliphate. One of the Houthis stated points of contention regards religious schools within the broader complaint of forced conversion. Meanwhile the Dar al-hadith network of religious schools has many, many offshoots. Probably the 800 schools referred below are Zaidi schools not Neo-Salafi schools. In any event, I’m nearly certain, but too lazy to dig through the archives, that these are the same statistics as 2005 (800/4000); the announcment at that time was greeted with a round of applause that the regime was cracking down on extremist schools. But now that Judge al-Hittar is on the case, I’m sure all the schools will be brought into line with regime approved curriculum.
20 percent of religious schools in Yemen unobserved: report
SANA’A, Dec. 09 (Saba) – An official report has revealed that about 20 percent of the religious schools in Yemen remain operating without government observation.
The report issued by the ministry of Endowments and Guidance noted that almost 4000 religious school operate in Yemen, of which 80 percent are directly monitored by the government through the ministries of Endowments and Guidance as well as Education.
The report says the two ministries are currently following up unobserved religious schools in an effort to close all schools operating in contravention to the Yemeni law.
Earlier, minister of Education Abdul Salam al-Jawfi issued a decision to close all schools registered at the ministry and teaching curricula that advocate the extremist ideology, the move which came to boost previous measures taken after the emerging of the Houthi rebellion in the northern province of Saada in 2004 when the cabinet issued a decision calling for the closure of all religious schools operating without harmony with the national educational laws.
The decision banned learning religious curricula not approved by the Education ministry and urged a review of curricula of the religious schools.
Despite early measures to bring all religious schools under the government observation, many of these schools still teach without direct observation.
I just ran across this from July, thought I’d throw it here:
SANA’A, NewsYemen
The governor of Hajja Fareed Mujawar ordered general director, security director and director of Education Office of Haradh and Hairan districts to close public and private religious teaching schools and as well as the Holy Quran centers.
The governor’s order based on a decision taken by the Education Ministry to close all religious centers which have sectarian or partisan affiliation, said local sources. The governor’s letter demanded that religious installations which violate the closure decision be reported and legally investigated.
People of Haradh and Hairan appealed to President Saleh to stop the decision of education minister.
How do you have a religious school without a sectarian affiliation? Its an extremely diverse religion, and the issue is equality or perhaps freedom. Al-Iman U is where Saleh launched his presidential campaign, and the state hires its grads for a variety of posts.
