Yemen: Women respond to the Vice and Virtue Committee-Part I

On July 15th Yemeni religious and tribal leaders held a conference in which they announced to an audience of some 2000 male attendees their intention to create an authority to protect virtue and fight against vice, which they called the Vice and Virtue Committee (VVC).

This authority aims at monitoring the activities of individuals and institutions in order to report them to the police if they consider that they transgress Islamic precepts. One of the first official actions taken by this committee was to issue a fatwa or legal pronouncement against women’s political participation, namely, against the quota system that the government wants to implement in response to women’s pressure to acquire representation in the political institutions.

The quota, which is part of the amendments that the government proposed to the electoral law, would allocate 15 percent of the seats at the Parliament that would be reserved to women candidates. Several women’s organizations, members of political parties, researchers and journalists have widely responded to the establishment of the Vice and Virtue authority and to the fatwa issued against women’s political participation, especially since the next parliamentary elections will be held in April 2009 and the electoral campaign has definitely started. We wish to publish a series of interviews held with some of these women who are analysing the meanings of the VVC and responding to their actions.

In this issue we interviewed Hooria Mashoor, Deputy Chairperson of the Women National Committee (WNC), the technical committee of the government’s Supreme Council for Women Affairs. Mashoor, who comes from Aden, works at the WNC since the year 2000. She has studied in Germany and Egypt and worked as a teacher and as a trainer at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Yemen Observer (YO) -When did you first hear about the Vice and Virtue Committee?

Hooria Mashoor (HM) - Three months before they held the meeting that established the authority in July, I started hearing about groups of people ‘working for the prevention of vice.’ I first knew about them through a colleague from the WNC who went to Hodeidhah for work.

When she arrived to the hotel she was asked by a group of men for her mahram or male companion and was told that she was not supposed to be alone at the hotel. She called us saying that she did not know what to do and that a group claiming to be official was asking her for a mahram if she wanted to stay at the hotel. They did not announce themselves as members of the VVC, because this authority was not yet presented as such, but they were working for the prevention of vice and the spread of virtue.

I also heard that some two or three months ago religious leaders, members of what now is known as the ‘virtue committee,’ went to the presidential office to meet the president. He gave them the green light to do ‘what is good for society.’

I do not know how they presented their project to the president, what they explained and what they omitted, but however they did it, they obtained the green light to carry out their activities and to establish their committee.

This is shocking because we believe that there is a state with state’s bodies that must control this, but this organization is not part of the state. Also, I do not know if the president was well aware about their ideas related to the quota, because it goes against the work of the government.

YO - Why do you think this authority emerges now?

HM - I consider that this is a political action, a political strategy as we approach the parliamentary elections which are just around the corner (April 2009). This political action is aimed at diving Islah, the main and biggest opposition party (Hizb al Islah, commonly referred as the biggest Islamist party in Yemen, is one the parties that conform the main opposition coalition, the Joint Meeting Parties (JMP) together with the Yemeni Socialist Party (YSP), Nasserite Unionists Political Party (NUPP), Federation of Popular Yemeni Forces (PF), the Al Haq party and the Arab Baath Socialist Party). The Virtue Committee has a political agenda, for they are presenting their authority and acting against women’s political participation just before the upcoming parliamentary elections. In July 15th they presented a political agenda: the quota is not against virtue, is a political issue.

They are also against women working and they want to send them back home, which would stop the development of the society. We are a poor country and one of the causes is that women do not fully participate in the economy of the country. In addition to this, when we are just getting to the point of implementing the quota, all of the sudden this committee issues a fatwa against it, but they will not stop us because the quota is a policy from the government, is part of the government’s program. I also consider that the VVC is a political and not a religious committee because they asked the president to continue using military means to stop the war in Sa’adah, to stop the al-Huthi rebels (The Sa’adah conflict entered this year its fifth year of a war in which the Shi’a al-Huthi rebels (followers of the Zaydi doctrine) fight to reinstate the Imamate that was overthrown in 1962.

In july 2008 president Ali Abdullah Saleh announced the “end of the war”). Approximately three days later the president declares that the war is over. What is interesting is that, before unification (1990), these same political figures were against unification and now they ask the president to maintain the country united.

YO -Is the Virtue Committee a legitimate authority to issue a fatwa?

HM -One member of the parliament e-mailed me questioning under which umbrella this committee is working. Even in the General People’s Congress’s (GPC) members of the party question this authority (The GPC is the ruling party since the unification of the country in 1990. Ali Abdullah Saleh, president and head of the party, is in power since 1978, when he became president of the Yemen Arab Republic in the north).

We also question them and we will send a letter to the official ‘ulama (group of religious leaders and scholars) responsible to issue a formal fatwa (See article “Yemeni female political activists fight back,” The Yemen Observer, 12 August, 2008). We want a fatwa from them, the official authority, if they can prove that the quota is against Islam.

Some ‘ulama are part of the VVC, but the official ‘ulama are the only ones that can actually issue such thing. Some of the ‘ulama also support the idea of increasing women’s participation in politics with the quota system, so their vision on this issue varies. Above all, what is risky is that they are using our religion, which is a fundamental factor in our society, to convince people about things that are not present in Islam or in the Qur’an, and that our work or the work of human rights activists goes against Islam, but human right activist here are Muslims as well.

YO –What do you now about how is the VVC being financed?

HM -We were amazed because thousands of religious men came from all over the country and also from Saudi Arabia to a conference that cost YR 200 million. Al-Eman University, al-Zindani (Sheikh al-Zindani leads the “conservative” stream inside the Islah Party, is the Chairman of the Islah Party’s Shura Council, rector of the Islamic Iman University in Sana’a, and was elected as president of the Vice and Virtue Committee in August 2008) and numerous tribal and rich men contributed economically to the conference. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is helping them and members from the Saudi Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice also attended the event. We think that a great part of their economic funds come from this source.

YO -What is and has been the work of the Women National Committee towards the quota system?

HM -We worked on the amendment of the electoral law and the political participation law, that is, in the amendment of the constitution and the pertinent laws in order for them to include a quota for women of 15 percent. We asked for the minimum in the short term, but for the long term we want a quota of 30 percent. If the parliament passes the quota and amends the laws considering our demands, then the entire problem with the Virtue Committee will be over. It would be embarrassing for the GPC to go backwards, and it would be very difficult for them to go back. That is why our main focus now is to pass the law. The WNC is a policy maker institution, we also work with grassroots organizations like NGOs but our focus is to pass the quota as a law.

YO -How are other women reacting to the quota and the VVC?

HM -Some time ago some women and I met at Amal Basha’s office (head of the Non-governmental organisation Sisters Arab Forum) to discuss the issue of the quota and how to apply it. We all agreed on the fact that we need to change the system of election (the lists) but also we realised that perhaps we cannot change this completely, so at least we need the quota. Women members of Islah were present and they also said that the JMP wants to change the system of election, but that needs to go first and then the quota. I asked them ‘are you not going to confront your party on this issue?’ and one of them responded that this is an internal and a different issue, which needed a different type of solution. I respected that because we all have different ways of working. In any case, if we make the quota become a law, then no one will be able to change it. And I can assure you of one thing: no one will stop us in this.

Written By: Anahi Alviso-Marino