Juhayman al-Utayibi in captivity after the ending of
the siege
Today marks the 40th
anniversary of the “Siege of Mecca”. This involved the seizing of Mecca’s Grand
Mosque, the holiest shrine in Islam, on the first day of a new Muslim Century
by a group of zealots led by Juhayman al-Utaybi.
The insurgents
declared that the Mahdi or “Redeemer of Islam” had arrived in the form of one
Mohammed Abdullah al-Qahtani. They also had the objective of overthrowing the
House of Saud on the grounds that they had compromised the strict tenets of the
Wahhabi creed originally imposed on the country after it had been formed by
Muhammad Ibn Saud.
The grievance
stemmed largely from the policy of Westernization and amongst several demands,
Uteybi’s insurgents called for the expulsion of Westerners, the abolition of
television and the ending of education for women.
The two-week siege
was ended after the Saudis obtained the blessing of Wahhabi clerics to storm
the Mosque with the aid of French Special Forces and flush out the rebels.
But this came at a
price.
The Saudis clamped
down in areas where ‘liberalisation’ had strayed such as the media and the
school curriculum. The decision was also made at the behest of the powerful
fundamentalist clerics for the Saudis to pump money into the coffers of Sunni
missionary organisations to spread the ideas of the Wahhabi strain in Islamic
universities and madrassas around the Muslim world.
Thus, this event,
alongside the formation of al-Qaeda from the remnants of the U.S.-backed
anti-Soviet Mujahideen in Afghanistan, can be said to have been pivotal in the
development of the global Islamist movements of the present age such as ISIS,
al-Nusra, Boko Haram and others.
Notes:
1. “Saudi Arabia and
the Doctrine of Global Islamist Terror” (2017)
Pdf download:
2. “The Crisis of
ISIS: A Debacle of a Great Game in Iraq and Syria” (2014)
Pdf download:
© Adeyinka Makinde (2019)
Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in
London, England.
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