A Crisis-Based Approach to the Intellectual Backgrounds of the Establishment of Ansar Allah Movement in Yemen

The present research focuses on the thoughts of the leaders of Ansar Allah Movement to account for the crisis in Yemen from their perspective as well as the way out of the crisis. The research method is descriptive-analytic, and the results show that the leaders of Ansar Allah Movement see threats to their Zaydi identity as the main crisis, believing that its main cause at a national level is the fall of the Zaydi government and at a transnational level, the spread of Salafism. Their ideal is the return to an Islamic government based on Zaydi principles, and the way to achieve this objective for them is the establish of the movement. The experience of recent years in Yemen shows that this movement began with a scholarly and promotional approach and then organized the cultural structure as Shabab al-Muʾmin, and finally, it adopted an operational approach, and within thirty years, it could develop from a small cultural group active in the mosques of Saʿdah and ʿAmran in Yemen to a main player on the political stage of the country and a member of the axis of resistance in the region. A full-fledged accurate rereading of the process through which movements like Ansar Allah were born can provide researchers and policymakers with a model for the formation of similar movements in other regions of the Islamic world.