In Yemen, a Benevolent Alternative to Osama bin Laden

by Greg Johnsen

(PNS) -- For the past two years, Western academics, commentators and politicians have been searching for someone, anyone, to present an alternative to Osama bin Laden's narrow and violent interpretation of Islam.

A controversial Yemeni judge and Islamic scholar leading the charge against terrorism just might be that person.

The Arab world, many have argued, is headed by corrupt rulers, backed by the United States, who pay only lip service to Islam while treating the state as an asset that can be exploited or bequeathed to their sons. Bin Laden thrives in such an environment, painting himself as an opposition leader who adheres to the Qur'an. The fact that he isn't a "mujtahid" -- a qualified interpreter of the Qur'an --and that many of his ideas are based on a selective reading of the Muslim holy book, hasn't affected his popularity. He is seen instead as one of the few who practices what he preaches.

Hamoud al-Hattar, of Yemen's recently formed Religious Dialogue Committee (RDC), is trying to change that.

Like most Arab countries, Yemen cracked down hard on suspected militants after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, arresting hundreds of men who fought in Afghanistan in the 1980s as well as those with links to al Qaeda. But as the arrests began to pile up with no corresponding decrease in violence -- the French oil tanker, Limburg, was attacked in 2002 -- Yemen searched for another way to deter terrorism.

The country decided on a policy of re-educating prisoners arrested for terrorism, based on the three pillars of Islamic thought: the Qur'an, the sunna (traditions of the Prophet Muhammad) and hadiths (Muhammad's sayings).

In August 2002, President Ali Abdullah Saleh put this policy into motion by establishing the five-man RDC, with al-Hattar as its chairman.

The committee, al-Hattar says, uses dialogue as a way to "uproot the intellectual causes and reasons for terrorism, because terrorism has faulty intellectual foundations."

The meetings are intimate. RDC focuses on small groups of prisoners, usually five to seven, and discusses with them subjects ranging from the concept of jihad in Islam to the rights of non-Muslims living in Muslim countries. At the end of the meeting, each side signs off on what was discussed.

"These people," al-Hattar said recently in an interview with the Yemen Observer, "had some surahs (chapters of the Qur'an) and hadiths memorized, but they had fixed misguided doctrine in their minds. They ignored the rules for determining what a Qur'anic text means and thereby made incorrect interpretations of many Qur'anic verses, strictly adhering to these mistaken beliefs."

For many, the road to rehabilitation is a long one. It requires patient explanation from al-Hattar as well as a great deal of prayer and thought on the part of the detainees. As al-Hattar has often pointed out, the Qur'an contains 124 verses that call on Muslims to treat non-Muslims with charity and grace, and only one that urges them to fight.

At the end of the first round of meetings in November 2002, al-Hattar recommended that 36 of the prisoners be released. Each was given his freedom with the caveat that they be kept under tight surveillance by Yemeni security forces. One year later, in December 2003, al-Hattar told the BBC that each had "honored their vows to give up extremism and violence."

This success paved the way for Yemen to release a further 92 rehabilitated prisoners in mid-December 2003, corresponding with the end of the Ramadan, the holiest month in Islam.

Not everything has been this easy for al-Hattar, a man who says that the "situations in Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan prompted unsuitable reactions that violate Islam itself." He has been called a government stooge and received a number of death threats. But the dialogue continues.

The British Foreign Office was so impressed by al-Hattar's success that it recently invited him to London to share his techniques with judges and politicians.

Reaction from the United States, however, has been mixed. The U.S. Ambassador to Yemen, Edmund Hull, has called al-Hattar a "very brave man." Others have expressed dismay that among the prisoners released have been some suspects in the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000.

For its part, Yemen claims that, "no one with blood on his hands has been released." As proof, it points to the fact that it was a graduate of al-Hattar's re-education program that supplied Yemeni forces with the information that led to the recent arrest of Mohammad al-Ahdal, the alleged mastermind of the Cole bombing.

Al-Hattar still has a long way to go with many prisoners who remain unconvinced by his arguments. Plus, there is always the danger that a re-educated former prisoner could revert to violence, which would almost guarantee the end of the experiment. But here in Yemen, a Muslim is presenting an Islamic alternative to bin Laden. And that, if nothing else, should give us hope.