by Kim Ghattas
By midmorning, at least six police officers had been shot and thirty-six wounded as they tried to approach the mosque in a convoy of cars. Reinforcements were on their way, checkpoints went up, and the streets around the mosque were blocked to traffic. Sami finally arrived in the city of his childhood to see what was happening and found the streets empty. Sami was doubtful that the true Mahdi had arrived: he knew the real Mahdi would not need guns or hostages. Sami conferred with some Islamic luminaries and fellow Sufis, like Sheikh Mohammad Alawi al-Maliki, who had held on to his green turban and managed to continue practicing and teaching a more moderate Islam in the holy city. For the sages of Mecca, there was no doubt that there was no Mahdi here. While there was still resentment toward the Al-Sauds and Najdis for bulldozing the Hejazi way of life, Meccans were ready to sacrifice anything to save the holy site that their families and ancestors had embraced with faith and devotion. Everyone pitched in to help the Saudi troops and officials who had begun to converge on the city: they offered food, helped transport supplies in wheelbarrows, and provided shelter.
Sami prayed, asking God for guidance, and concluded he should help, too. He had something very valuable: floor plans and aerial photographs from his research on the hajj. Sami called the office of Prince Ahmad, the younger, half-brother of the king and deputy interior minister, offering his help. The authorities had nothing to work with so far—the troops didn’t know much about the inside of the mosque, the inner labyrinthine rooms, the underground cellars. The construction company that was working on the expansion had the blueprints but was slow to provide them.
Sami was summoned to the Shoubra hotel, a kind of temporary command post, where the ministers of interior and defense, Princes Nayef and Sultan, were also gathered. Sami wanted to participate in the operation to liberate the Holy Mosque. He suggested using sledgehammers to create openings around the gates and bulldozers to knock them down, providing protection to soldiers who could then storm the courtyard. But he quickly understood that the royals, eager to put an end to this humiliating challenge to their authority as quickly as possible, were already contemplating tanks and artillery. Sami could not abide that. The only man who had used violence in the sanctuary was the prophet himself, during his conquest of Mecca, after returning from exile in Medina. But according to the most trusted hadith, the prophet’s instructions had been clear: “Beware! (Mecca is a sanctuary!) Verily! Fighting in Mecca was not permitted for anybody before me, nor will it be permitted for anybody after me.” All life and all things in the sanctuary should be respected: “It is at this moment a sanctuary; its thorny shrubs should not be uprooted; its trees should not be cut down.” After providing the officials with the floor plans, Sami went home with a heavy heart.
By noon of that day, November 20, the country was already cut off from the outside world. All international lines were shut, no calls could be made, no telex or telegrams sent. Land borders were closed to non-Saudis. A total news blackout was imposed. Uncertain about the exact nature of what was unfolding and of the threat to the House of Saud, all royals outside the country were called back, from the most inconsequential prince vacationing on a beach in California to the deputy head of intelligence, Turki bin Faisal, son of the previous king, who was in Tunis for the Arab League summit. Crown Prince Fahd, also in Tunis, stayed put. His aides dismissed the reports from Mecca as a mere “domestic incident.” King Khaled was in Riyadh so there would be no panicked departure for Fahd. The key was to give the impression that everything was under control.
Night fell over Mecca, and with it came an eerie calm, shattered by occasional bursts of sniper fire. Prince Turki arrived that night and narrowly escaped death: as he entered the Shoubra hotel, the glass door was hit by a bullet and shattered in his hands. The power lines to the Holy Mosque had been cut, and the structure, the size of a stadium, was a gaping black hole at the heart of the city.
News of the disturbances made its way across the Atlantic, where the day was starting at the White House and everyone’s mind was occupied by the hostage crisis in Tehran, now in its third week. The American ambassador in Jeddah, where the foreign embassies were based at the time, had managed to send out a diplomatic cable, thanks to a hotline to the State Department that remained unaffected by the Saudi efforts to cut all communications to the outside world. In his first dispatch, the ambassador emphasized how much still remained unclear about the events unfolding inside the mosque. The armed attackers were likely Saudi but possibly Iranian, or maybe Yemeni. The only certainty was that the well-armed men posed a huge challenge to the House of Saud. With Khomeini looming large over everyone’s mind at the White House, the only word that everyone seemed to retain from the information coming out of Saudi Arabia was: “Iran.”
On Wednesday, November 21, two-thirds of the front page of the New York Times was devoted to the Tehran hostage crisis and the Mecca events, and the two had been linked: U.S. WARNS IT HAS “OTHER REMEDIES” IF DIPLOMACY FAILS; CARRIER FORCE HEADS TOWARD IRAN, read one headline. Another article, titled NEW KHOMEINI ATTACK, focused on the ayatollah’s call for the shah to be sent back to Iran for trial, and his threat to put the American hostages on trial as spies. In the bottom half of the front page, a wide picture of the Ka’aba in the courtyard of the sacred mosque was accompanied by an article about the unfolding crisis in Saudi Arabia, reporting “Mecca Mosque Seized by Gunmen Believed to Be Militants from Iran.” In the piece, American officials speculated that the takeover was a response to Khomeini’s call for a “general uprising by fundamentalist Moslems in the Middle East.” The Mahdi element of the shocking events only added to the impression that this must have been an Iranian takeover. Even in the Arab world, where Khomeini had fired everyone’s imagination, many believed it was possible that, whether Iranian or Saudi, whether Sunni or Shia, the rebels in Mecca could well have been inspired by the ayatollah. Iran was in fact helping to agitate against the House of Saud at that exact same time, but in the eastern part of the country, where an uprising was about to start.
For now, the focus was still on the events in Mecca, and there was wild speculation about what was really going on. The most dangerous rumor was one promoted by Khomeini himself in a statement read out on Radio Tehran on Wednesday morning. “It is not farfetched to assume that this act has been perpetrated by the criminal American imperialism so that it can infiltrate the solid ranks of Muslims with such intrigue … It would not be farfetched to assume that, as it has often indicated, Zionism intends to make the House of God vulnerable and create riots.” With communications restored, details of the shocking events were trickling out of the country. That morning, the news was on the radio from Egypt to Pakistan where, in some circles, anti-imperialist sentiments needed little stoking. An angry mob of students converged on the US embassy in Pakistan, a sprawling compound with housing and a swimming pool, on the edge of Islamabad. “Death to the American dogs,” they chanted. “Avenge the sacrilege of Mecca!” The mob forced its way into the enclave, setting cars and buildings on fire. The attack lasted six and a half hours, during which time the Pakistani police and army were nowhere to be seen. Two American servicemen died, as did two embassy employees and two protesters. The embassy building was destroyed. The anti-American violence continued to rage across the country, and by Friday more than three hundred Americans had been evacuated from Pakistan.
On Wednesday evening in the kingdom, more than thirty-six hours after wild rumors had circled the globe, the Saudi interior ministry issued a statement maintaining that “there are no indications that lead us to believe that foreign nationalities were involved in the incident … It has been confirmed that the attack has been carried out by a gang that deviated from the path of Islam.” This was not enough for the American ambassador in Jeddah, John West, who was worried that his embassy could still come under attack and wanted a clear, unequivocal Saudi statement that the United States had not been involved. Foreign embassies were still located in Jeddah in those days, because the Saud
is didn’t want too many non-Muslims living in Najd. Writing in his diary, West reflected on a difficult, draining day and the seriousness of what was happening in Mecca. But he felt he had ascertained at least one thing by then: there was no Iranian involvement. It would take another two days for the Saudis to unequivocally state that neither Americans nor Iranians were involved. The initial tepid Saudi denials of foreign involvement were a cowardly effort to deflect attention for as long as possible from the kingdom’s own responsibility in creating the monster that had hijacked Islam’s holiest site. Obfuscation and the feigning of ignorance would become favorite forms of Saudi subterfuge to evade responsibility for any violence or intolerance connected to the kingdom.
The country remained on full military alert, with troops guarding “key industrial plants, airports and palaces.” Whoever was responsible for the attack, whether Iranian militants or Saudi gunmen, this looked very much like a Saudi failure. A missive from Egypt was particularly alarming for the Saudis. The grand sheikh of Al-Azhar, one of the highest religious authority in Sunni Islam and one of the world’s oldest universities, urged “quick, decisive action” and called for a joint meeting near Mecca of Muslim scholars in response to this “brutal aggression.” This was not the unqualified message of support that the Saudis would have wanted to hear; rather it was an implicit challenge to their role as custodians of Islam’s holiest sites, a call for others in the Muslim world to help protect the mosques. Unlike previous custodians of Mecca and Medina, the Al-Sauds had neither lineage to the prophet nor ancestry in the holy cities. When they had conquered the Hejaz in 1926 and destroyed ancient sites in Medina, Wahhabism was still considered heretical by much of the Muslim world. There had been calls for a committee of Muslim nations to look after the holy sites. This would always be a source of insecurity and angst for the new monarchy. The kingdom worked hard to prove it could rise to the challenge, as the young dynasty derived prestige, power, and legitimacy from the role. Now the House of Saud seemed to have failed in the most spectacular way.
That night in Mecca, the mosque remained dark and the city mostly deserted. But the sky was lit up with flashes of light from artillery shelling. The king and the country’s top clerics had reached a deal during the day that allowed the use of lethal force in the Holy Mosque. They had found a way around the verse that still echoed in Sami’s head:
“And fight not with them at the Sacred Mosque, until they fight you in it: so if they fight you in it, slay them. Such is the recompense of the disbelievers.”
Although Juhayman and his gang were Muslims, an argument could be made they were acting like disbelievers. The clerics were now working on the text to make their case. More and more pilgrims were managing to escape. One Iranian pilgrim had fled and managed to make it all the way back to Tehran, where he spoke to journalists. He added credence to theories of a Shia takeover by saying the rebels had described the Mahdi in line with Shia beliefs, as the Twelfth Imam, hidden for eleven centuries and now returned to establish God’s kingdom on earth. The Iranian pilgrim said he didn’t buy any of it. Speaking either of Juhayman or Qahtani he said: “The moment I met this guy, I knew he was fishy.”
On the third day, the wannabe Mahdi died. He had survived a dangerous game of capturing grenades thrown at him by Saudi soldiers and throwing them back at the troops—until one of them exploded in his hands, shredding his body. Those among the rebels who had believed in the messianic mission they were carrying out were as perplexed as they were disturbed. How could the Mahdi die if he was to lead the world to redemption? And still, the fighting went on, as the Saudi government continued lying and claiming victory. On the morning of Friday, November 23, in Pakistan, the headlines stated that the Holy Mosque was UNDER FULL CONTROL OF SAUDI FORCES. The Saudi minister of information echoed that the situation was “in control and is reassuring.” But the advent of live broadcasts on radio and television also meant that around the Muslim world people waited for the Friday sermon to be broadcast from Mecca.
When Friday arrived, the sermon came instead from the imam of the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina. There was no more hiding that the House of Saud was not in control of the House of God. By the end of the day, a fatwa, a religious opinion written by the kingdom’s clerics, was ready, giving the Saudi authorities full religious cover for the onslaught they were about to unleash. The clerics had worked around the hadiths, the Quran, and their own beliefs to come to the aid of the royal family. Everyone’s survival was at stake, including the clerics.
The power of the Al-Sauds still rested on their alliance with clerics upholding the legacy of the holier-than-thou preacher Ibn Abdelwahhab. Born in 1703, Ibn Abdelwahhab had been inspired by the dogmatic teachings of a literalist, medieval theologian, Ahmad ibn Taymiyya, who belonged to the Hanbali school of jurisprudence, the strictest of the four Islamic schools. A complex character with a rich legacy who had lived at the time of the Crusades and sanctified war against the Christian invaders, Ibn Taymiyya would be quoted mostly for his edicts allowing war against a Muslim ruler in certain cases. He would inspire generations of activist and jihadist Salafists who ignored the nuances of his teachings. Ibn Abdelwahhab had taken Ibn Taymiyya’s pronouncements stripping Islam down to absolute monotheism and began to enforce them in Najd. He went further still by declaring war against anyone who didn’t follow his teachings—non-Muslims but also Muslims. The Najdi preacher had taken theology and turned it into a political and military mission. Ibn Abdelwahhab was so extreme that his own father and brother denounced him. He sent missives around the Arabian Peninsula and beyond to scholars and notables of the Muslim world, appealing to them to follow him and what he claimed was the true version of Islam. He was rejected and mocked in scathing responses coming from as far away as Tunisia, where the scholars of Al-Zaytuna, one of the oldest, most important centers of Islamic learning, undid his arguments one by one. The locals in his desert settlement accused him of heresy and tried to kill him.
Ibn Abdelwahhab sought refuge in the settlement of Dir’iya, ruled by Muhammad ibn Saud, founder of the dynasty, and suggested they combine forces. Under the banner of religion and war against anyone who did not abide by Ibn Abdelwahhab’s version of Islam, the two men could expand both territory and wealth. Preaching and military raids would go hand in hand, bringing in land, loot, and zakat, the mandatory alms. The marriage of convenience led to intermarriage between the two families, starting with Ibn Abdelwahhab’s daughter and Ibn Saud’s son. Through all the upheavals the Al-Sauds faced—annihilation, exile, revival—the alliance remained a key source of strength for both sides of what was essentially an extended family of royals and clerics: the House of Saud, the Al-Sauds, and the House of the Sheikh, Al-ash-Sheikh. They could not be separated. The agreement had been that Ibn Saud would handle politics and governing while Ibn Abdelwahhab would be in charge of religion and preaching. When the clerics or their heirs, spiritual or familial, stepped out of bounds, undermining the pragmatism essential to governing, the Al-Sauds brought them back into line. This worked most of the time. But the interaction with the West and the arrival of thousands of Westerners to help build up the country and extract oil was proving to be a great source of friction in the modern kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
One virulent critic of Western influence, and a rising star, was a young blind cleric named Abdelaziz bin Baz. His influence would shape the minds of those who would transform the region in the decades to come. In 1940, Bin Baz, neither an Al-Saud nor an Al-ash-Sheikh, had the audacity to call for a ban on all non-Muslims on the Arabian Peninsula. He landed in jail. After his release, he would continue to issue anachronistic religious opinions; among them were refusing to believe the Americans had landed on the moon, insisting the sun orbited the earth, complaining about the introduction of radio and television, of girls’ education, of anything that was modern and novel. But he had understood the lesson of his time in prison: never undermine the House of Saud and the pillars of its power.
No matt
er the failings of the Al-Sauds, the clerics saw them as a bulwark against worse dangers, like communism and secularism. So the clerics provided the royal family with the fatwa that would save their rule and permit the use of force in the Holy Mosque. The royal family used the word “deviant” to describe the rebels, but the clerics were more careful: they described Juhayman’s men only as “an armed group.” How could they describe them as deviants when some of the men had been groomed and taught by the clerics themselves? Juhayman was decrying the Western infiltration of the kingdom, the decaying morals, the corruption … all grievances the clerics themselves had voiced.
Decades earlier, Bin Baz had also been trying to guard against such decay. As vice rector of the Islamic University of Medina in the 1960s, he had used his influence to help launch a new missionary movement to enforce Wahhabism in the Hejaz. Though now part of the kingdom, the province had, so far, managed to maintain a more relaxed application of religion and preserve its more diverse culture. Small groups of religious students in Medina began acting as vigilantes: ripping pictures and posters, vandalizing shops with mannequins, with Bin Baz as their spiritual guide and mentor. Juhayman, having retired from the National Guard after an eighteen-year career in which he did not shine, was one eager member of the movement. By 1976, the group had spread across all major cities. There was nothing secret about them, or their proselytizing, or the camps they organized in the desert for young men. In 1977, Juhayman, then in his forties with a wife and children, broke away from the main group and began attracting a band of hardcore followers in a new, cult-like movement. Even Bin Baz was too soft in their eyes, too accommodating of the royals.
