Al-Murtada Al- Mahatwari to Al-Soufi: I advised Abdul-Malik for the republic, but he only wants to rule
English - Saturday 24 September 2022 الساعة 03:09 pm
Aden, NewsYemen:
Political writer Faisal Al-Soufi gave details of an informal conversation he had with the Zaidi cleric Al-Murtadha Zaid Al-Mahturi - before his assassination in an explosion targeting his mosque in Sanaa - about the position of the Houthi militia leader towards the republican regime and his intention to restore the monarchy.
Al-Sufi said, in an article titled: “This is how Al-Murtadha Al-Mahturi spoke,” that the latter invited him in the month of Ramadan of 2013 to visit the library of the Badr Institute, which he ran, and eat breakfast at his home, noting that what prompted him to write this article on this occasion, which People celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the September 26 revolution and the republican regime, which is what he heard from Al-Murtada Al-Mahatwari at the time.
Al- Mahatwari was quoted as saying that he was weeks before (the meeting) in Saada, and he met the leader of the Houthis, Abd al-Malik bin Badr al-Din, and that he had also visited him twice before "for the purpose of advising and knowing what is going on in his head."
Al Mahatwari said - according to the writer - that he asked Al-Houthi about things he wanted to know from him, but the former did not get an explicit answer from the latter about what he aspires to through the Houthi movement, and that the only thing he understood was that he was on his way to rule the country.
Al- Mahatwari stated that he tried to find out whether he (Abdul-Malik al-Houthi) would maintain the republican system, or would he want it as a monarchy, or a system similar to the system prevailing in the Islamic Republic of Iran? But "it was not made clear, rather it was not required."
And the writer quoted on the tongue of Al-Murtada: “I told him (i.e. to Al-Houthi) if you are determined to restore the monarchy, and by God, they will not see you jinn from here, and jinn from there, all of them claim that they are the heirs of the House of Hamid al-Din, and he is more deserving of the leadership than you after the mandate of Imam Ali, peace be upon him. They see that they are more entitled to rule than others, including you, and you are new in this field, and they have been in it for a long time, so if this is your choice, sir, I advise you to exclude it.”
Al-Mahtouri continued: "(The leader of the Houthis) did not comment a word on my statement, and (support) when I was disappointed, I went back to tell him about mixing the Sunni with the Shiite, and I suggested to him that he order the teaching of the Kindergarten Book, in the schools and institutes of the movement, but he did not accept, despite the fact that Its author is a Shi'ite Sunni, and the book is an excellent example of Shi'ite tradition, and Sunni Shiism."
