Profile of Sheikh Abd al-Majid al-Zindani

February was not a good month for Sheikh Abd al-Majid al-Zindani, a man the U.S. has labeled a "specially designated global terrorist." First, a Yemeni government weekly, 26th of September, published a report claiming President George W. Bush had sent a letter to President Ali Abdullah Saleh demanding that Yemen arrest al-Zindani and freeze his assets (26th of September, February 23; Terrorism Focus, March 7). Then, over the course of the next two weeks, al-Zindani was involved in two vehicle accidents, which were later determined to have been assassination attempts against the aging sheikh (al-Jazeera, March 4).

 

Like most incidents involving al-Zindani, the details of the stories were in constant flux, and in the end few really knew exactly what happened. Despite the fact that the newspaper's website eventually published the purported text of the letter from Bush to Saleh on March 4, it was eventually discovered that no such letter existed. The story of the assassination attempts had a similar feel of fluidity.

 

Al-Zindani's son, Abdullah, told al-Sharq al-Awsat on March 5 that it was not true that his father had been the target of an assassination attempt. Just a week later, however, his father corrected this version of the story in an interview with Khaled al-Hammadi of al-Quds al-Arabi. He said that the first accident, in which a tire on his car had "exploded," was worrisome, but he became convinced that he had been targeted a week later when an entire wheel fell off the car. "It is well known that assassination operations designed for cars are carried out in this manner," he said (al-Quds al-Arabi, March 12).

 

Al-Zindani refused to implicate the U.S. in the affair, saying, in a rare moment of discretion, that "we do not know who the person responsible is, nor do we know who is behind him" (al-Quds al-Arabi, March 12). Nevertheless, despite all of al-Zindani's tact, the issue has strained U.S.-Yemeni relations, and has initiated a meeting between President Saleh and U.S. Ambassador Thomas Krajeski. A video of this meeting was later aired on Yemeni Television, with a voice-over by President Saleh: "Sheikh al-Zindani is a rational, balanced and moderate man and we know him well, and the Yemeni government guarantees [his actions], and I guarantee his character" (al-Quds al-Arabi, March 12).

 

The battle between Yemen and the U.S. over the fate of al-Zindani began on February 24, 2004, when the U.S. Department of the Treasury named al-Zindani a "specially designated global terrorist" for his financial support of al-Qaeda (the UN added him to its list of "individuals belonging to or associated with al-Qaeda," in accordance with Security Council Resolution 1267, three days later).

 

Al-Zindani is inevitably taken at face-value, as a fire-breathing radical intent on the destruction of the U.S. This image of him as a wild-eyed militant is further aided by his striking appearance, which is set-off by a bright red, henna-dyed beard, as well as by his oratorical presence, which often borders on bombastic despite his occasional difficulties with Arabic grammar.

 

All of this, however, tends to disguise the fact that al-Zindani defies labels. His thought is a much more nuanced response to the modern world than the simple tags of Wahhabi or Salafi indicate. In the political arena he is a frightening man, who has advocated violence and destruction for those who disagree with him. On the other hand, intellectually he has tackled some of the most difficult issues facing religion in today's world, namely the tension that exists between religion and science. Additionally, he also specializes in the study of tawhid, or the oneness of God. One of his books on the subject is used as a textbook in Yemeni public schools.

 

In a country with an unacknowledged HIV/AIDS crisis, he is one of the few public figures working to combat it, opening a treatment center in Sanaa. His methods are rather unorthodox—he believes he can heal patients through Quranic intercession—but he refuses to ignore the problem, unlike many that argue that Muslims do not contract the disease (al-Quds al-Arabi, March 12).

 

In 2003, he issued a controversial fatwa that was designed to make marriage easier for Muslims living in the West. He was attacked for legitimizing sin, but he maintained his position, saying it was a way for Muslims to interact successfully in modern societies (al-Sharq al-Awsat, September 12, 2003).

 

He heads al-Iman University in Sanaa, where John Walker Lindh studied before heading to Afghanistan to join the Taliban, although al-Zindani has denied that Lindh ever attended the school in numerous interviews (al-Arabiyya, August 4, 2004). He is also the head of the consultative council for Islah, the country's largest opposition party, and in the opaque world of Yemeni politics he remains very close to President Saleh, who has often delivered the commencement address at al-Iman.

 

His following in Yemen is mostly derived from cassette tapes of his sermons that are sold in stores throughout the country. Large signs in stores around the new campus of Sanaa University promise that cassettes of his Friday sermons are available by 7 pm on the day they are delivered. He is also a writer, despite the criticisms of some Western-educated Yemenis that he "doesn't really know Arabic grammar," and has authored at least 14 books on subjects from the rights of women to his latest on fasting (author's interview, Sanaa, 2004). He often contributes the front page editorial to the monthly newspaper of al-Iman University, Saut al-Iman, or the Voice of Faith.

 

Two years ago, very little was known about al-Zindani in Western circles, and much of what was known was wrong. This is not necessarily surprising; even Western academics specializing in contemporary Yemeni history seemed unsure of his origins. While this is no longer the case, thanks largely to the internet and the large number of interviews that al-Zindani has given in recent years, the U.S. seems to have done little to update its files. Even the birth date that the U.S. government has for him, "circa 1950," is wildly off the mark (U.S. Treasury Department, February 24, 2004).

 

Al-Zindani was actually born closer to 1940—most likely in 1938—on Mount Ba'dan, near a village of the same name, which overlooks the southern city of Ibb, a date that becomes clear from reading through al-Zindani's numerous interviews and writings. He spent his primary years in school in Ibb, before moving to Aden, which was under British rule at the time, to continue his studies. In his late teens, he moved to Cairo to attend Ain Shams University.

 

It was in Cairo, where al-Zindani went to study pharmacology, that he first became interested in the relationship between science and the Quran, which is often termed al-i'jaz al-'almi, or the scientific wonders of the Quran. In an interview with the Yemeni magazine al-Shaqa'iq in February/March 2004, al-Zindani said that in 1958 a group of Egyptian communists published what he called "a gray pamphlet" attacking the Quran and claiming that it contradicted modern science. "This started me on my path," he told the magazine, "of answering those challenging communists." The fact that al-Zindani studied in Cairo during the late 1950s and early 1960s has also been confirmed by his fellow Yemeni students who were in Cairo at the time (author's interview, Sanaa, 2004).

 

This would eventually become al-Zindani's life, although he spent time fighting with Yemen's "third-way force," Hezbollah, during the civil war in the 1960s. (There is no relationship between the Yemeni Hezbollah and the Lebanese grouping of the same name.) He spent most of the 1970s shuttling back and forth between Saudi Arabia and Yemen, as he slowly imported a more conservative version of Islam into Yemen through the education system.

 

Finally in the 1980s, following a splintering of the Yemeni Muslim Brotherhood, he convinced Sheikh Abd al-Aziz bin Baz, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, to support him in establishing the Institute for the Scientific Inimitability of the Quran and Sunnah, which was based at King Abd al-Aziz University in Jeddah (al-Shaqa'iq, February/March, 2004). It was here where he first met Osama bin Laden, and where he found a base to recruit and transport thousands of young Yemeni and Saudi Arabian men to Afghanistan to fight against the Soviet Union.

 

The Department of the Treasury calls him one of "bin Laden's spiritual mentors," and while al-Zindani did guide and teach the younger man during the 1980s, he started downplaying the relationship even before 9/11. He told al-Sharq al-Awsat that bin Laden did not finance any part of al-Iman University (al-Sharq al-Awsat, June 3, 2001). He went even further after the attacks on New York and Washington, although he was careful to remain ambiguous. In 2004, he avoided a question by Hassan M'awdh of al-Arabiyya regarding his relationship with bin Laden, saying only that during the 1980s everyone, even the U.S., had been against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan (al-Arabiyya, August 4, 2004).

 

Still, the fact remains that he was able to utilize his contacts with the Afghan Arabs to help the Yemeni government put down a secession attempt by the Socialist south in 1994. He returned to Yemen following unification, lured back to his country of birth with promises of positions of power. In 1993, he was named to the five-man appointed presidential council, where he remained until 1997.

 

More recently in 2000, he was involved in a case labeling the late writer Muhammad Abd al-Wali an infidel for a line in his book, Sanaa: The Open City, that allegedly blasphemies God. The fact that al-Wali had been killed in a plane crash in 1973 seemed to matter little to al-Zindani. He has also led the charge, collecting donations, to pursue the prosecution of Muhammad al-Asadi, the editor of the English-language Yemen Observer, for re-publishing the now infamous "Muhammad cartoons," despite the fact that the Observer published them with a line through the cartoons. The case is still pending.

 

His fatwas have also been linked to the killing of a Socialist Party politician, Jarallah Omar, on December 28, 2002, as well as the murder of three Baptist missionaries two days later. There have also been rumors that he gave the fatwa that led to the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000, which killed 17 U.S. sailors. He has refused to appear in court to answer questions regarding any of these accusations.

 

Al-Zindani's future remains unclear, but for the moment he remains what he has always been: an intriguing and complex figure in both the political and intellectual arenas, loathed by the U.S. and championed by Yemen.

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