The Houthi-led government in Yemen announced that it had forced an Israel-bound ship to turn back as it was sailing through the Red Sea in violation of the warnings issued on Saturday
I’m Arab and supportive, and sometimes use it. The term isn’t racist, there’s no racial significance to it. They do prefer the term Ansar Allah and I think we should use it. While some use the term Houthis to delegitimize them, I have seen supporters use the term as well, it is named after their leaders, Hussein and Abdul-Malik al-Houthi.
I want to stress that we should use the official name, or simply refer to them as the government of Yemen, but it is wrong to assume that the term is purely pejorative specially when used here.
They’ve emphasized for many years now that they don’t use this term but it’s so normalized that even some friends use it too which is sad. Everyone disrespects the Yemenis. Lots of Muslims and Arabs use the term and we shouldn’t be using it either. Maybe racist isn’t the right word. I dont know. Seems racist that they don’t get respected enough to even be allowed to name themselves.
I stopped posting on lemmygrad because every other week I have to post the same comment… “Houthi” is a racist term. Please do better.
https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2741683
I’m Arab and supportive, and sometimes use it. The term isn’t racist, there’s no racial significance to it. They do prefer the term Ansar Allah and I think we should use it. While some use the term Houthis to delegitimize them, I have seen supporters use the term as well, it is named after their leaders, Hussein and Abdul-Malik al-Houthi.
I want to stress that we should use the official name, or simply refer to them as the government of Yemen, but it is wrong to assume that the term is purely pejorative specially when used here.
Salaam 🫡
They’ve emphasized for many years now that they don’t use this term but it’s so normalized that even some friends use it too which is sad. Everyone disrespects the Yemenis. Lots of Muslims and Arabs use the term and we shouldn’t be using it either. Maybe racist isn’t the right word. I dont know. Seems racist that they don’t get respected enough to even be allowed to name themselves.
I just used the title from the article, and was not aware of this. Now I know.