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00:00:06get
00:00:49are mountainous areas, and mountainous areas do not
00:01:03wells, and this was
00:01:12Welcome to this episode in which we accompany Dr.
00:01:16Ali Musaad Al-Hwaidi on a journey that extends from the early
00:01:19upbringing to the formation of consciousness, then stopping at
00:01:23the most prominent intellectual and national issues he lived through and his vision
00:01:27of the reality of Yemen and the danger of the Houthi project. As well as
00:01:30the role of scholars in restoring the state and uniting Yemenis.
00:01:34Welcome to our honorable guest and welcome to biographies
00:01:37and stances. Welcome, Doctor.
00:01:39May God protect you. In this
00:01:42meeting.
00:01:44Doctor, before we start this journey, as is the custom of the program
00:01:47and the custom of all episodes,
00:01:50that I not be drawn in this let's get to know Ali Al-Hwaidi. Who is Ali Al-Hwaidi?
00:01:53Where was he born? How did he grow up?
00:02:08that the old generation grew up in
00:02:11a harsh environment. Yes, a harsh
00:02:15economic environment and a harsh
00:02:17social environment.
00:02:19But the political environment was perhaps better than this
00:02:23time, stable. It was stable during the days of Al-Hamdi, may God have mercy
00:02:27him. The situation
00:02:31we lived in was that we entered the first school built in
00:02:34the country after the revolution,
00:02:38by the grace of God Almighty.
00:02:40the goal of
00:02:42the youngest students in And the school was far away. Where? In which
00:02:44area? In Mawiyah. Although you ran away from the year you were born.
00:02:48I was born in 1970. Praise be to God. I ask God to prolong our lives
00:02:51and your lives. So
00:02:55it was the first school built in
00:02:57the region after the revolution.
00:03:00And we headed
00:03:03towards the school with enthusiasm, and we
00:03:06had ideas and came first in were children. And the teachers
00:03:12through him is not qualified were Egyptians. And when we faced
00:03:14the Egyptians, it was as if we were facing monsters, not facing
00:03:17humans. I mean,
00:03:21the intimidation, terror, and fear
00:03:24made us feel like we wouldn't meet
00:03:26humans, even though they were
00:03:30good-natured, may God reward them. And they were the first
00:03:33to teach us and educate us.
00:03:36And there was great enthusiasm. The school
00:03:39thirdly, in order at was crowded. One class had almost 50 students,
00:03:42and it was small. And the class was divided into
00:03:45sections. And by the grace of God Almighty,
00:03:48we didn't know
00:03:52who was distinguished, whether it was the one who was number one or the one who was number
00:03:55100. We had no idea who
00:03:59was distinguished. So when we came in
00:04:02the early ranks, some people
00:04:05blamed us, "Why weren't you tenth?"
00:04:09No, not first. I was among the first, but it wasn't
00:04:11because in the section or in the class, we were almost
00:04:15100 or more.
00:04:17So we thought that the one who came first was the one
00:04:20who would be the best
00:04:25Just present. And this diploma did not one. We didn't have the idea, nor had people learned before us. And
00:04:28the environment was encouraging.
00:04:32People were eager for education, by the grace of God Almighty.
00:04:36to insist that the party be present and the candidate They competed for education,
00:04:39by the grace of God Almighty.
00:04:43The primary stage
00:04:45education paid for then in passed for me. And our situation
00:04:48was similar to the southern regions.
00:04:52We are, I mean, we are in Dhale.
00:04:55So the ideas, people
00:04:59were moving. I was going towards schools
00:05:01in the South, considering that they were schools that embraced the children
00:05:05of the poor. And my father was
00:05:07afraid that I would absorb ideas other than
00:05:10religious ideas. Islamic, because he was
00:05:14religious. And he was keen for me to
00:05:18enter a religious institute. So he enrolled me in the Al-Jund Institute
00:05:21in 1986.
00:05:25But my inclination was, I tended towards
00:05:29the South,
00:05:31because my uncles studied there
00:05:35and were graduates of Ba Dheeb Institute.
00:05:37And my inclination
00:05:40was with them. However,
00:05:43after that, I entered the institute, and my ideas gradually
00:05:46changed. Yes. Until a person
00:05:49in two stages can
00:05:52distinguish between this thought and that thought, even
00:05:56though I didn't open my eyes
00:05:59in childhood except to Lenin's books and to
00:06:03Karl Marx's books, even though my father, as I said, was religious,
00:06:06and my uncles tried to attract us
00:06:09and portray this great man, this
00:06:12one who liberated humanity and liberated... I mean, we
00:06:16thought that Karl Marx, I don't know
00:06:20what he did in the world, and even though his idea was a retaliatory
00:06:23reaction to his failure to marry
00:06:27a rich woman he loved. After that,
00:06:31the matter became clear to us, what was the whole idea that
00:06:34Karl Marx led? So, by the grace of
00:06:37God Almighty, we entered the Al-Jund Scientific Institute,
00:06:40and I mean,
00:06:43I was nervous at
00:06:46the beginning because I still carried my ideas, and I
00:06:49was young, I mean. But a person absorbs the ideas of his environment, because we
00:06:53were influenced,
00:06:56as we said, by my uncles' studies.
00:06:59And my father was keen
00:07:02direction. He wanted me to go
00:07:06in a religious direction because my father was
00:07:11religious knowledge of Shafi'i jurisprudence. Then after
00:07:14that, I remember that
00:07:18we were, I mean, on January 13th,
00:07:21people were saying "Allahu Akbar," and I
00:07:25was, I mean, criticizing those who were saying "Allahu Akbar"
00:07:27because so-and-so was killed, and so-and-so was killed, and so-and-so was killed,
00:07:31and I was still attached to the past I
00:07:35was in. Then after that, the ideas
00:07:38became clear to me, and I learned to distinguish ideas through
00:07:42my studies
00:07:45of intellectual topics, even though I was a child
00:07:47and I was
00:07:49the youngest in the institute. My friend and I were
00:07:54the institute, and the institute had a thousand students, and it had
00:07:58competencies and prominent figures,
00:08:00among them Dr. Fouad Al-Banna, if you've heard of him.
00:08:04He was two years ahead of
00:08:07us, but I was in
00:08:10the same line and in the same activities.
00:08:13And he was a man who loved sports very much, but he
00:08:18the republic, he and we after that. By the grace of God Almighty,
00:08:22we saw
00:08:25giant sheikhs whom we didn't
00:08:28know until after we graduated.
00:08:30And we came to know, for example, there was
00:08:34one called Sheikh Muhammad Ali Al-Sudani.
00:08:38He used to teach us Tafsir and give us lessons, and we learned
00:08:41Tafsir from him. And he was a great
00:08:44sheikh, may God have mercy him. I discovered later
00:08:48that he was the Mufti of all of eastern Sudan,
00:08:51meaning the Red Sea state and Port Sudan. He
00:08:54was, I mean, he was a great scholar.
00:08:58Then we had another scholar.
00:09:00We had another scholar,
00:09:04who was the Imam of the Umayyad Mosque
00:09:08in Damascus, and he taught us, and we
00:09:11didn't know that he was of such stature due to the
00:09:14limited understanding of the teacher as
00:09:18the one who teaches you the subject you are in or
00:09:21explains something to you. And by the grace of God Almighty,
00:09:24we graduated from the institute in 1989, by the grace of God Almighty,
00:09:28and we worked as teachers
00:09:31with a five-year diploma system.
00:09:36qualify for entering a bachelor's degree.
00:09:39So a five-year diploma in a teacher system.
00:09:44Teacher, yes. Okay, well, Dr. Ali, I want to go back to a point you mentioned at the beginning. You said
00:09:48that many people were probably looking for education in the South because
00:09:52the schools accommodated students' children, especially the poor. Was
00:09:57the northern regions? No, the government schools were all also, I mean, free.
00:10:01Education was free there, right? Education was free, but we didn't even have the price
00:10:05of a pen. We didn't have a pen. We didn't have a school
00:10:08uniform. We didn't have notebooks. We didn't have them.
00:10:12The curriculum was free. We didn't
00:10:15know in our studies something called a daily allowance for students.
00:10:19We didn't know this in our studies. This study
00:10:23was like, the father or the family, how
00:10:26do they arrange their affairs to
00:10:31food and drink, and food and drink
00:10:34in a very austere way, not
00:10:37the situation that today's youth imagine, and that people
00:10:41imagine today, that I mean, perhaps breakfast
00:10:45was tea and dinner was tea and biscuits
00:10:48or dry bread. I mean, that was the solution for many. I mean,
00:10:52how was the region? I mean, was the region, for example, barren?
00:10:55I mean, was agriculture a basic occupation for people, and was it
00:10:59sometimes in many areas yielding food and had high
00:11:02returns if it grew some things like coffee and so on?
00:11:06And, I mean, were your areas not agricultural
00:11:09areas? Were they, for example, areas of emigration, or what? We
00:11:14yield agriculture. Agriculture
00:11:18is scarce, and, I mean, even if it's qat, it's for a season.
00:11:22And in seasons when
00:11:25rain comes, there are not even
00:11:28the situation, even though there was a period
00:11:32of, I mean, thank God, economic expansion during Al-Hamdi's time.
00:11:35God Almighty made many things easy for us,
00:11:39but it returned after a while
00:11:41to form. Did you start studying at the Al-Jund Institute
00:11:45from which grade exactly? From second preparatory. From second teacher, called second
00:11:48teacher. I entered the teacher system on the five-year system, which was cancelled
00:11:52later. I mean,
00:11:55the three-year system. There was a three-year system on two sides: a scientific system
00:11:59and a religious system. We were in the five-year system. I wanted to shorten
00:12:02a year in order to get a job.
00:12:04The goal is the job. It is reform
00:12:08and fate, regardless, even if it is not, I mean,
00:12:12up to the responsibility. Also, like the Nasserist
00:12:15Party, the General People's Congress, the Socialist Party, and other
00:12:18political parties, each sees that their candidate is the most qualified for this position.
00:12:22When will people leave this
00:12:25partisan aspect and determine what is
00:12:28most suitable for the benefit of the people? I mean, it lies in any person. We deal
00:12:32with... and excuse me for prolonging, but we when we learn about some
00:12:35external partisan experiences, you see voters
00:12:38today voting for a certain person who belongs to a certain
00:12:42party, then they switch to another party, only for whoever
00:12:46will benefit the region. I mean, what about us?
00:12:50Look, the political trend
00:12:53we have in political
00:12:55choices
00:12:57sometimes
00:12:59has goals. Sometimes
00:13:02اهداف بعض
00:13:05competition is not to overthrow a person or
00:13:09so on. The goal is to prove existence, sometimes the existence of the party itself, the existence
00:13:12of the party itself. And what is the goal? Even the goal is to prove
00:13:16existence so that it is not absent from what? So that it is not absent or
00:13:19marginalized from this district. Does this sometimes
00:13:22affect people's interests?
00:13:25Look, when does it affect people's interests? When it crosses
00:13:29red lines. No, the interests of the people, if
00:13:32this candidate who proved the party's existence
00:13:37for the position, this is the problem. Sometimes
00:13:40the popular weight and the incubator
00:13:43والحاضنه
00:13:45for the political component in a certain place is what determines
00:13:49the nature of the candidate. The competitor in this
00:13:53case has several options: either serious
00:13:57competition, or competition for the sake of
00:14:00اثبات وجود او
00:14:04least to achieve
00:14:07something
00:14:10if negotiations take place between him
00:14:13and the candidates. But I say
00:14:16that in Yemen, sometimes,
00:14:19I mean, we must say the truth, that the competitor
00:14:22may be better than you, but you,
00:14:25due to sometimes political
00:14:28competition, and we sometimes
00:14:30concede
00:14:33in many districts. We did not
00:14:36aim to enter all
00:14:40districts. We know where the district we compete in is. We know
00:14:44where the district is that we can be present
00:14:47in.
00:14:50Despite that, we remain in
00:14:53contact with the other candidates. Is this wrong or right? I mean, is it
00:14:57wrong, I mean, is it right
00:15:01succeed regardless, or
00:15:04is it wrong, I mean, for example, to insist on my party's
00:15:08presence at the expense of people's interests?
00:15:12Well, I believe that
00:15:15my presence is the interest.
00:15:18I will achieve their interest. I can hold him accountable.
00:15:21As a preacher, I can be close to him. Advise him,
00:15:25and he will take advice. Convey to him the message of the people,
00:15:28and he will understand it. Guide him
00:15:32to this as a preacher, because I do not have the intention to
00:15:35impose or say or so on. Rather,
00:15:38the direction in which a person is in this moment, and with
00:15:42that,