In 2004 the Shiite Houthi Movement, also known as "Ansar Allah", began an insurgency in northern Yemen against the Yemeni government led by Ali Abdullah Saleh. The movement was founded in the 1990s as a Zaydi revivalist movement by Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi who believed his movement served to defend Islam; he had also lived in Iran for a period of time, and held Iran's supreme leader Ruhollah Khomeini in high regard, and a former parliament member part of the Islamist Party of Truth, as the "Believing Youth". The group was taken over by Hussein's son Abdul Malik al-Houthi after Hussein's death in 2004. Under Abdul Malik's leadership the group partly seized control of the country initiating a civil war in Yemen, causing the Yemeni government to request assistance from Saudi Arabia to fight the Houthis in 2015. Since the start of the civil war in 2015, the Houthis have recruited 50,000 child soldiers in doing so, the group promotes Jihad as part of their ideology as well as their recruitment.