The Seige of Mecca

On November 20, 1979 two hundred armed Islamist dissidents led by Saudi preacher Juhayman al-Otaibi seized the Grand Mosque. They claimed that the Saudi royal family no longer represented pure Islam and that the mosque, and the Kaaba, must be held by those of the true faith. The rebels seized tens of thousands of pilgrims as hostages and barricaded themselves in the mosque. The siege lasted two weeks, and resulted in several hundreds deaths and significant damage to the shrine, especially the Safa-Marwa gallery. While it is the Saudi forces that carried out the assault, they were assisted with weapons and planning by a small team of advisors from France’s GIGN commando unit.

This siege birthed al-Qaeda, according to Yaroslav Trofimov, author of “The Siege of Mecca: The Forgotten Uprising in Islam’s Holiest Shrine and the Birth of al-Qaeda.” There is a very good interview with Trofimov on “Fresh Air” in which he speaks more about the siege. After the siege, Saudi Arabia realized that they were not viewed as the most religious of Islamic states and they began to buy off many of the radicalized sects by funding their schools. This didn’t work out so well. From these schools, a new generation of Muslims were indoctrinating into the beliefs of the same Islamists who took over the Grand Mosque. An interesting tidbit: The Grand Mosque was heavily damaged when Saudi forces raided it. The construction company that rebuilt the Grand Mosque was owned by the bin Laden family. Where was the U.S.? Distracted by the Iranian hostage crises.