SANAA, 9 June 2004 — The Yemeni government is to take control over some of the country’s mosques in an effort to deny extremists a preaching platform, a government official said yesterday.
The Ministry of Endowment and Guidance plans to prevent preachers who belong to Islamic political parties from holding sway over mosques, the ministry’s undersecretary Yahya Al-Najjar said.
Scholars who show loyalty to political parties, particularly the opposition Islah party, would not be allowed to use mosques to spread their extremist beliefs, Al-Najjar said in remarks published by a website run by the ruling GPC party.
“Pluralism is in politics not mosques. It is against the law to use mosques for partisan or political purposes,” he said.
Al-Najjar, however, said the ministry would keep a tight rein on only 28,000 of the country’s 70,000 mosques.
Last year the Yemeni government, in a move aimed at scaling down religious education, merged thousands of Islamic-oriented schools with those providing general education.
