The well-developed literature on Islamist politics has tended to focus on partisan and welfare institutions within the context of existing states. Civil war raises important questions about whether and how the relevance of such institutions changes when the state itself fragments. This article seeks to understand Islamism in Yemen as a kind of post-organizational political field. At a theoretical scale, Yemen’s civil war and the transformation of the country’s Islamist politics offers lessons about the fixity of categorical distinctions within and across forms of Islamist activity. This article works to map dynamics of fragmentation within pre-war Islamist organizations, the disintegration of authority among Islamist leaders in the context of war, and the effect of each of these processes on the resurgence and partial transformation of particular Islamist claims. The field, as an analytic approach less firmly tied to the state itself, allows for a consideration of Islamist politics as articulated locally but shaped as well by transnational engagement with ideas and institutions.

关于伊斯兰政治的发展良好的文献倾向于在现有国家的背景下关注游击党和福利机构。内战引发了关于国家本身分裂时这些机构的相关性是否以及如何改变的重要问题。本文旨在将也门的伊斯兰主义理解为一种后组织政治领域。从理论上讲，也门的内战和该国伊斯兰政治的转变提供了关于伊斯兰活动形式之内和之间的类别区别的固定性的教训。本文旨在描绘战前伊斯兰组织内部的碎片化动态，战争背景下伊斯兰领导人之间权力的瓦解，以及这些过程中的每一个对特定伊斯兰主义主张的复兴和部分转变的影响。作为一种与国家本身联系不紧密的分析方法，该领域考虑了伊斯兰政治的本土化表达，但也受到跨国界与思想和制度的参与的影响。