BIOGRAPHY

Early Life

Ibrahim Ali Alwazir (hereinafter “Ibrahim Alwazir”) was born in 1931 in Taiz, Yemen into a family renowned for producing influential political leaders, scholars, philosophers and poets. Following in those footsteps, Ibrahim Alwazir pursued this knowledge and remained very close to his father, Ali Abdullah Alwazir, who was an erudite individual and a highly influential political figure who successfully fought against the colonial plans for the region and ultimately for Yemen’s freedom. After establishing the independence of Yemen from the Ottoman Empire, Ali Abdullah Alwazir became the governer of Taiz and continued to fight for the liberation of what was then South Yemen from British colonization. After successfully keeping the British at bay, Ali Abdullah Alwazir directed the opposition towards the oppressive policies of Imam Yahya Hamideddin which included a dictatorial way of ruling the land, stagnant economic policies, and his attempt to create a monarchy out of the imamate by announcing that his son, Ahmad, would be the crown prince. In 1948, Ibrahim Alwazir’s relative, Abdullah Ahmad Alwazir along with other revolutionaries took part in the assassination and overthrow of Imam Yahya Hamideddin in order to set up a constitutionally based form of representative government. It was the revolution’s aim that a constitutionally based representative government would secure the inalienable rights of man to freedom, justice and liberty. The success of the revolution was short-lived, however, as Imam Abdullah Ahmad Alwazir’s government was overthrown less than a month later by Ahmad Hamideddin, the son of the deposed ruler. Subsequently, all the leaders of the revolution were executed including Ibrahim Alwazir’s father and relative, Ali Abdullah Alwazir and Abdullah Ahmad Alwazir, respectively, as well as two uncles from his mother’s side, Mohammad Hassan Abu Ras and Abdullah Hassan Abu Ras. Shortly thereafter, Ibrahim Alwazir, at the age of 19, was jailed along with his four brothers.

Mid-Life

There were several noted scholars imprisoned with Ibrahim Alwazir, and he used the opportunity to further his education by receiving daily instruction from the scholars. He remained in jail for 3 years up until 1953, when supporters of his family arranged Ibrahim Alwazir’s escape to Aden, now also part of reunited Yemen. The British allowed him to board a ship leaving the port to Sudan and from there he went to Egypt.

In Egypt, Ibrahim Alwazir mobilized other exiled Yemenis into a reform movement called Cooperative Democrats that advocated political change, economic development, and social justice in Yemen. Ibrahim Alwazir outlined the by-laws by which the movement would be governed by and formalized this movement in 1961 with the name Ittihad Alguwa Alsha’abia, the name it is known by to this day. After the military coup, in 1962, Ibrahim Alwazir returned to his homeland. In the continuing fighting between republican revolutionaries, eventually supported by Egypt, and the royalists supported by Saudi Arabia, Ibrahim Alwazir continued to advocate for a constitutional based form of democracy that would ensure social justice. Within two years, he and his comrades, and most of his brothers, left Yemen calling for a national conference to end the war.

A Life Threatened

His life experience and his beliefs make him an opponent of despotism wherever it may be found. His escape from imprisonment by the regime that executed his father was only the first of a series of brushes with martyrdom. There were 7 known attempts at his life.

In 1978, he narrowly escaped assassination in his home while in exile, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. More recently, on Nov. 24, 1988, he was lightly wounded and one of his students crippled for life in a foiled assassination plot in Dearborn, Michigan, which has a sizeable Yemeni-American community. Whoever the perpetrators may have been, whether it be the Yemeni government or Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi Intelligence Services, their attempt to silence this determined advocate of democracy (shura) between ruler and ruled in the Islamic world has only drawn more public attention to this learned, valiant and witty spokesman for human rights. It also has made Ibrahim Alwazir more certain than ever before that Muslims in the Middle East and American advocates of closer ties with the Islamic world are ready to listen to his ideas.

Overview of Writings & Speeches

Ibrahim Alwazir's many books on the application of Islam to contemporary political issues have made him well-known throughout the Muslim world.

While first in exile in Sudan, he wrote about the guest workers from North Yemen and elsewhere in his books Face to Face With Misery and A Talk to Yemenis in Exile. In Cairo, his differences with the then mainstream of Arab nationalist thought were expressed in his book Lest We Go On in the Dark.

During his brief return to Yemen, he was dismayed by the new police state and also by the fact that followers of the Zaidi School of Islamic Jurisprudence seemed unaware of this school’s advocacy of freedom and justice and opposition to oppression. As a result, he wrote Out of Error's Way and Zaid Bin Ali: A Chronicle of Constant, True Jihad.

In the period of Arab introspection that followed the Six-Day War of 1967, he wrote The Bitter Experience. Then, during the era when Colonel Al-Hamidi ruled Yemen as an absolute despot, ignoring warnings to introduce the democratic reforms in whose name the absolute monarchy had been overthrown, Ibrahim Alwazir wrote The Moral. He warned that rulers who achieve power without introducing measures to achieve popular consent lose their lives when they lose office. Similar points were made in his book An Epistle to the Nation, written after Colonel Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen's incumbent president, assumed power.

Ibrahim Alwazir's most recent book, keyed to the beginning of a new century of the Islamic calendar, is On the Eve of the 15th Century After Hijira. It calls upon Muslims to study the lessons of their history, and apply them to realize truth, justice and freedom in the century to come. He feels he speaks for a silent majority in the Islamic world that seeks constitutional government based upon Islamic principles to make rulers accountable and bureaucracies responsible to the governed.

In 1981, at the third Islamic Summit of the Organization of Islamic Conference, he asked rulers of Muslim countries to demonstrate their respect for human rights, the will of the people, and the principles of shura. As a follower of the Zaidi tradition of Islamic jurisprudence, he warns against sectarian obstacles to the unity of the Ummah, or Islamic world.

In 1991, at the School of Advanced International Studies of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, Ibrahim Alwazir delivered a lecture in which he addressed the question about the destiny of the Middle East. In his lecture titled Whither the Middle East: Arabism or Islam?, Ibrahim Alwazir argues on the basis of his profound knowledge of the ideology of Islam, to demonstrate its superiority over all other intellectual and social propositions, and most of all over the concept of nationalism. Proceeding from a brilliant analysis of the Arabic language and its most exalted manifestation in the Holy Quran and its spiritual message, he makes it clear that Islam offers a way—the only possible way—to the freeing of man’s mind from superstition and from a soul-destroying quest after false goals and, thus, a way towards mankind’s social salvation.

Ibrahim Alwazir is a leader of Yemen's Democratic Consultative Party, which supports establishment of a parliament-like consultative council (shura) in his country. In his letter to former President George Bush, Sr., he challenges the US president:

“Democracy, by definition, should be for everyone, and it is a contradiction in terms if a state is built on a coexistence of democracy and discrimination, based on racial or ideological differences, or based on the accumulation of power by one group to the deprivation of others.”

Ibrahim Alwazir is an inspiration to Yemenis aligned with his political thoughts. For people who meet him, he serves as a reminder that there are Muslim Arabs who believe just as ardently in rule by the consent of the governed as did Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln or others who came before him.