The Houthi family, which belongs to an aristocratic clerical class of Zaydi Muslims, has been the driving figures of the Houthi movement during its formative moments. Badr al-Din al-Houthi and his sons Muhammad, Hussein, and Abdul-Malik have been the most notable members of the Houthi family.
The Houthi movement was an outgrowth of a Zaydi educational movement known as the Believing Youth movement. Badr al-Din al-Houthi was a principal spiritual leader of the Believing Youth, and Muhammad al-Houthi played a prominent organizational role. The network, which supplemented and promoted education in the country, was intended as an alternative to similar institutions that had been supported by the Saudis. It was established with encouragement from the Yemeni government after the unification of Yemen (1990) and a falling out between Yemen and Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf War (1990–91). In the early 2000s Hussein al-Houthi, who in the 1990s was a member of parliament, increasingly became the face of the Believing Youth movement and directed it toward political activism, opposing the policies of Pres. Ali Abdullah Saleh. The sustained criticism of Saleh’s government prompted a crackdown and, in 2004, government forces killed Hussein al-Houthi. The Believing Youth movement then took up arms and launched a rebellion, reorganizing as a militant group that observers began referring to as the Houthi movement.