Throughline - The Siege of Mecca

Episode Date: November 14, 2019

On November 20th, 1979, a group of Islamic militants seized Islam's holiest site — the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. They took thousands of hostages and held the holy site for two weeks, shocking the Islamic world. This week, how one man led an uprising that would have repercussions around the world and inspire the future of Islamic extremism.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at AutographCollection.com. The morning of November 20th, 1979, would have seemed like any other in Mecca. It was warm, the sky was clear, and much of the city was preparing for Fajr prayer, the first of five for the day. The season of Hajj had just ended, and pilgrims from around the world gathered in Islam's holiest site,

the Masjid al-Haram, or Grand Mosque, a massive compound surrounding the Kaaba, an ancient black cubic building that sits in the middle of a vast courtyard. Muslims call it the house of God, the earthly place they direct their prayers. In the Islamic calendar, it was the first of Muharram in the year 1400, the first day of the new century, when the people of Mecca make their own pilgrimage to the shrine. Around 100,000 pilgrims filled the courtyard, lined up in concentric circles, facing the Kaaba for Fajr prayer. Just as the prayer ended, shots rang out.

This wasn't a sound any pilgrim expected to hear. Violence is strictly forbidden in Mecca. Before the pilgrims could figure out what was happening, a man followed by three gunmen emerged from the crowd and began walking fiercely towards the mosque's imam. The crowd parted as the man charged the minbar, or pulpit, and snatched the mic from the terrified imam. The man began to speak Arabic in a thick Bedouin accent. He was tall and thin, with brown skin and long, wavy hair. His name was Jahayman

al-Oteybi. The hundreds of armed men he commanded scattered across the grounds of the mosque, yelling orders at the pilgrims in Arabic, English, and Urdu. Some of the men, snipers, climbed the seven minarets surrounding the main grounds

and took up positions overlooking downtown Mecca. Jahayman instructed them, If you see a government soldier who wants to raise his hand against you, have no pity and shoot him because he wants to kill you. The Saudi police protecting the mosque were armed with little more than batons. No pity and shoot him because he wants to kill you." The Saudi police protecting the mosque were armed with little more than batons. Two guards were killed immediately. Many others ran for their lives.

Many of the pilgrims in the mosque began chanting, Allah-u-Akbar, or God is the greatest, something Muslims often do in trying moments. Soon, the militants also joined in the chant, and the chaos reached a climax, just as Jahayman announced that he and his men were now in control. And with that, it was clear. Islam's holiest site and 100,000 people had been taken hostage.

The siege of Mecca, an event that would forever change Saudi Arabia and the Muslim world, had begun. What was Saudi Arabia like before 1979? We were living a very normal life, like the rest of the Gulf countries. Women were driving cars, there were movie theaters in Saudi Arabia. Women worked everywhere. We were just normal people, developing like any other country in the world, until the events of 1979. Saudi Arabia is in the news constantly. It's a major player in the affairs of the Middle East

and the U.S.'s closest ally in the region other than Israel. For decades, it's been one of the world's biggest exporters of oil. But that's not the only thing it's exported. Saudi Arabia's religious authorities have actively spread their interpretation of Islam, Wahhabism. Through these efforts, their ultra-conservative, literalist version of the faith has traveled around the world and inspired hatred and even violence. Saudi Arabia also has a poor human rights record, especially when it comes to women. Until recently, women could not vote, drive, or travel without a male relative's permission.

The country's de facto leader, Mohammed bin Salman, whose voice we just heard a moment ago, is a 34-year-old prince of the Saudi royal family who has tried to reverse some of these trends by loosening restrictions on women, social media, and public mingling of the sexes. Bin Salman has often cited the year 1979 as a turning point for Saudi Arabia,

when the country's clerics began to exert more power in the affairs of the nation. His interpretation of history and the sincerity of his efforts are up for debate. Under his rule, Saudi Arabia has targeted journalists, imprisoned dissidents, and bombed civilians in a war against its neighbor, Yemen. But he's right about one thing. When Joaim Anar Hoteibi and his band of militants took over the Grand Mosque in 1979, they inadvertently opened up an opportunity for Saudi clergy to grab power.

So in this episode, we're going to take you back to the 15-day siege of Mecca that changed Saudi Arabia and continues to shape the Muslim world. This is Yamile Wasslin, and I'm listening to ThruLine, which is an awesome podcast show. Thank you. Bye. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the WISE app today or visit wise.com. T's and C's apply.

Every Muslim who can afford it is expected to make a pilgrimage to Mecca once in their life. While there, pilgrims will spend a lot of their time in the Grand Mosque, a massive facility that covers over 400,000 square feet. It's a sanctuary where violence, even in its smallest form, is forbidden. So as you can imagine, many of the pilgrims who were there in the mosque on the morning of November 20th realized just how serious this situation was. Most people were horrified by what had happened. Most people that were inside the mosque were besides themselves. This is Joe Kashishian.

I'm a senior fellow at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies. And Joe says as the rebels delivered their manifesto, chaos erupted in the mosque. The militants had locked all of the gates to prevent hostages from getting out. Once the chaos died down, there were tens of thousands of pilgrims trapped in the mosque, being controlled by hundreds of armed gunmen. Initially, there wasn't a major response from local authorities. It appeared as though the entire city was in shock.

But at this point, you might be asking, who is Joaimim? What motivated him? And how did he end up staging this attack? Before we answer any of that, we have to go over some basics about Saudi Arabia and get a sense for what was happening there in the years leading up to 1979. These are the treasure houses of an ancient desert kingdom,

a land the size of Western Europe. The kingdom of Saudi Arabia is named after the family of Al-Saud. Starting in the 1800s, they tried to unite Bedouin tribes to take control of the peninsula. They captured and lost control of some parts of Arabia, but never fully controlled it for long periods of time. But after generations of struggle, they were finally able to become rulers of Arabia in 1932, after the fall of the Ottoman Empire. They established a country and named it after themselves. And by controlling Islam's two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina, they became khadim al-haramain al-sharifain in Arabic, which means the custodian of the two holy mosques. An incredible responsibility.

But in order to achieve this position, the House of Al-S Saud enlisted the help of conservative Muslim fighters called the Ikhwan, or brothers. The Ikhwan were followers of the Wahhabi interpretation of Islam. Wahhabis reject any attempts to modernize Islam and proselytize an often historically inaccurate, puritanical view. Their religious fanaticism made them extremely effective soldiers for the Saudi army.

The country that the Saudi family controlled was poor and extremely underdeveloped. Most people lived as they had for centuries. But in 1938, a major resource was discovered in Saudi Arabia. Oil. A land of too little water and too much oil. That would probably describe the dilemma of a country

which is only just realizing its importance in the 20th century. By the late 1970s, oil revenues meant that... The kingdom was slowly but surely modernizing. It was developing, it was opening up to the outside world, which irked some of the most conservative elements in the kingdom. This is Yaroslav Trofimov. I've been covering the Muslim world for nearly two decades for the Wall Street Journal. He's a longtime Middle East reporter who wrote the book The Siege of Mecca.

Things like television were still very controversial, and the attempts by the royal family to bring the country into a more modern age. Women went to the beach wearing swimsuits. They wore the abaya, but the abaya, it was not an imposed item. But this apparent betrayal of Wahhabi principles wasn't the only thing that angered many conservatives. Economic progress in the country wasn't happening everywhere. In many small towns and villages, Bedouins didn't always have the same access to resources as their fellow city-dwelling citizens. So many of the Ikhwan who fit in that second group felt not only disgusted by the modernization in the country, but they also felt left behind by it.

In a monarchy, obviously, there are always injustices. We're not talking about a democracy or a democratizing society. So there are always individuals that are left out of the system. And one young Bedouin, the son of an Ikhwan fighter, felt both of these slights. His name was Jahayman al-Otaibi. Jahayman al-Otaibi comes from one of the most prominent tribes of Saudi Arabia, al-Otaibi. And he was, at the beginning, destined to become a foot soldier in the National Guard. Jahayman served in the National Guard, Saudi Arabia's army, for many years. But eventually, he became more and more interested in studying Islam. He started studying in the Islamic University of Medina under Sheikh bin Baz, who was a leading cleric and then later become the Mufti of Saudi Arabia. And he became

enamored by the teachings of several prominent clerics. He started getting the following that he had at the Islamic University in Medina. And started to proselytize as much as possible the potential changes that he wished to bring to the country. Shuhamand al-Ruteibi opposed the presence of foreigners, the presence of Western embassies to him were anathema, and obviously things like television, women on television. He rejected the establishment. He thought that there was an alternative and that there ought to be an alternative to the ruling family.

Juhamad really opposed any non-Muslim, non-Wahhabi penetration of Saudi Arabia. So he didn't like the fact that there were Western embassies. He decried the fact, you know, why is the flag of the cross, you know, flying over buildings in our country? And what he calls is for justice. He calls for the rule of law, and that he himself is going to go ahead and put everything back in order. He's going to save Saudi Arabia from these bad rulers.

So he really wanted to sort to create a pure Islamic state, which is not all the different from what, for example, ISIS wanted to do in more modern times. Juhayman was a true believer. He lived an austere, pious life. He refrained from modern luxuries like television. And he was an excellent recruiter for the conservative movement. He wrote and shared his thoughts widely and began to organize his followers. He created this band, let's say,

of individuals. At some point, that alarmed the Saudi authorities. Dozens of members of Joaiman's organization were detained, and Joaiman enlisted his former teacher, Sheikh Bin Baz, to help. And then Sheikh Bin Baz intervened. All of the detainees were released. This could have crushed the movement. But instead, Joaimim's group... Continued organizing. At this time, Joaimim was just one of many emerging leaders in the conservative movement in the kingdom.

But then something happened that set him apart. As he was going on this path, he had this dream about his brother-in-law, and decided that he was going to be the Mahdi. The Mahdi is a debated, mysterious concept in Islam. It isn't mentioned in the Quran, but basically, the idea is this. At some point, a messianic figure called the Mahdi, who, according to some traditional interpretations, is going to come from the same Arab tribe as the Prophet Muhammad,

and even have the same physical features and name as the Prophet, will return to usher in the Day of Judgment. Jahayman became convinced that his soon-to-be brother-in-law, Muhammad ibn Abdullah, was the Mahdi. He looked at him and looked at the descriptions of how the Mahdi should look in the hadith, you know, the sayings of Prophet Muhammad, the physical descriptions of the name, you know, it all kind of seemed to match for him. To the best of our knowledge, it appears that Jahayman genuinely believed his soon-to-be

brother-in-law was the Mahdi. And that led him to a serious conclusion. Preaching and winning followers wasn't enough. Action needed to be taken. The Saudi government had to be removed. But interestingly, this is where he differed from other religious conservatives, like his teacher, Sheikh Bin Baz. Bin Baz really, at the time, endorsed a lot of the criticism that Shuheiman had against the state of Saudi Arabia at the time. Bin Baz would say, well, yes, this is wrong, that is wrong, that is also wrong, but we should not disobey the king because the king is the guarantee that our way of seeing Islam, our way of doing things will be preserved against the infidels who for the most hardline Wahhabi clerics would be any other Muslim. Ultimately, even bin Baz's disapproval wouldn't be enough to sway Jahayman's determination to get rid of the Saudi royal family. And his ability to wage an attack got even stronger after he started attracting foreign followers to his

movement. He won followers from all over the Middle East, especially Egypt. Some of these followers had come from the Muslim Brotherhood, a well-organized Islamic political machine. And so you really had this marriage of the Saudi Wahhabi zeal that came from Jahayman and the ready-made Islamic militancy that came from Egyptian and some other foreigners who came to Saudi Arabia.

So you had the fusion of the theology with the organizational skills and violent extremism. By 1979, Jahayman's group grew to include hundreds, if not a thousand or more, members. They were motivated and capable of a well-planned attack on the Saudi regime. Jahayman and his followers had a radical idea. They were going to attack Islam's holiest site, the Grand Mosque of Mecca.

Which is a blasphemous act, but Jahayman came up with his own religious interpretation to justify it. He figured it would be a strike right at the heart of Saudi legitimacy. After all, if they couldn't protect these holy sites, should they be in charge of them? He hoped it would gain the attention of the world and usher in an Islamic revolution and the Day of Judgment. They planned the attack for the first day of Muharram. In the year 1400 in the Islamic calendar,

which happened to be 1979, the Mecca Mosque is a huge facility and millions of people go in and out every year, so the doors are almost never locked. Juhayman and his people prepared pretty well. They drove pickups full of weapons into the tunnels in the catacombs below the holy shrine, the Kaaba. Theories are they were able to do this by bribing guards and by using a dark but ingenious technique to bring weapons into the mosque. People bring in their dead to perform lust rituals, prayers and so on. So the plot of this band was essentially to introduce weapons in coffins.

Joheiman and his militants dressed as pilgrims. They grabbed their weapons and... Emerged from the underground, mixing in with the pilgrims. And they took over the facility, shut down the doors and... Joheiman stepped up and ripped away the microphone. Announced that the Mahdi had returned and that the liberation of Saudi Arabia would start. One must say that most of the pilgrims at the time in the mosque were not fluent in Arabic. Because they were people from Pakistan, from Indonesia, from Turkey, from Africa. And even the ones who are fluent in Arabic couldn't understand Juhayman's Bedouin accent.

There was a lot of confusion, and people didn't understand what was going on until fighting started. When we come back, the siege of Mecca turns into a battle. This is Christy Massara calling from Akron, Ohio, and you are listening to ThruLine. With your friends. By mid-morning on November 20th, the scene in downtown Mecca was chaos. Joaiman and his followers had seized the Grand Mosque, taking nearly 100,000 scared, panicking hostages.

Word began spreading throughout the city that there was an incident at the shrine. At the time, there were construction crews working for the Saudi bin Laden group, a company owned by the father of Osama bin Laden, renovating parts of the mosque. Those workers immediately alerted authorities. Police were deployed to end the siege. But when officers tried to approach the mosque... They were shot at from the minarets and massacred.

Anyone who dared enter the mosque grounds was shot. And soon, Saudi authorities... They started to send more troops, but the troops refused to fight. The soldiers and the National Guard knew that it's forbidden to even, you know, harm a bird in the Holy Precinct, let alone bring in weapons, let alone shoot weapons. Initial assaults proved to be very costly because the facility is like a fortress where very high walls,

and you have to climb on top of them, and there are sharpshooters who are shooting on the soldiers. Very soon, Juhalman realized that he cannot keep all these people in there because they need food, they need toilets, they need water. So with a pretty short period of time, he let most of them go. Once the Saudis understood the seriousness of the situation, they realized they had a problem. As the custodians of the holy cities, they were embarrassed by their inability to keep pilgrims safe. So they tried to keep the news of the siege from getting out of Mecca. Saudi Arabia immediately cut off phone lines to Mecca.

They really managed to suppress it for several hours and nobody quite knew what was going on. The news we received were dictated by them. Like in the company I was working for, one guy asked me after the siege ended, he asked, was there really a siege in Mecca? This is Adnan Hrub. He lived in Saudi Arabia at the time of the siege. He explained that local people knew something was happening in the Grand Mosque,

but nothing about who was responsible. There was a lot of confusion. It wasn't easy for people to access the information. There were even some people in the outskirts of Mecca who did not know what was happening. It was a total news blockage. And God only knows, we did not know what the truth really was. The United States, one of Saudi Arabia's closest allies, also didn't know who was responsible.

So when President Carter gathered his advisors in the White House, the information they had that this must have been the work of the Iranians. The Islamic Revolution overthrew Iran's Shah, or king, earlier in that year. And the new Iranian government was immediately antagonistic towards the House of Saud. They were still holding hostages at the American embassy in Tehran when the siege in Mecca started. So the U.S. government, within hours of the attack, concluded that Iran must have done something, must have stirred trouble in the Holy Mos mosque. And so administration officials actually blamed Iran at the time and sent aircraft carriers to the Gulf in response. Iran's response was denial, and then to blame the U.S. for the siege.

Ayatollah Khomeini obviously went on the air and said, no, no, it's the Americans sending Jews to desecrate our holy site. This message made its way all over the Islamic world, and many people believed Khomeini's assertion. This conspiracy theory about the American involvement spread much, much faster around the Muslim world and really fueled violence at the time. Thousands of Pakistanis, inflamed by rumors that the United States had invaded Mecca, burned the U.S. embassy here,

trapping about 100 Americans and embassy employees for five hours in the heavily secured top floor code room. One Marine guard was shot and killed during the attack. In Pakistan, mobs took over and burned the American embassy. In the riots in India, there were riots. The attack of the American embassy in Tripoli and Libya. About 2,000 demonstrators stormed the United States embassy in Libya today, shouting slogans in support of Ayatollah Rola Khomeini's anti-American policies.

And even Mohammad Abjad, the Turkish militant who tried to kill the Pope, played truant. shouting slogans in support of Ayatollah Rolla Khomeini's anti-American policies. And even Mohammad Abjad, the Turkish militant who tried to kill the Pope, was also motivated by this. The Saudi government made a couple of announcements in the days after the siege began. They acknowledged that there was an ongoing crisis in the Grand Mosque, but offered little beyond that. Official Saudi comments on the slight disturbance in the Mecca only appeared two or three days later. As word of the siege began seeping out of Mecca, the Saudis realized they needed to end it,

quick. And to do that, they had to stage an actual full-scale military assault. But remember, it's forbidden in Islam to commit acts of violence in Mecca. So the Saudis needed a religious decree, or fatwa, from the kingdom's clergy, or ulama, to go ahead with the assault. So they needed fatwa from the religious authorities that would authorize the operation and the fatwa wasn't forthcoming because the religious authorities wanted to extract a price for that.

Okay, so remember Sheikh Bin Baz, Johayman's teacher, the guy who helped get his men out of jail? Sheikh Bin Baz was the dean of the Islamic University of Medina, so he was probably the most respected Islamic scholar at the time and the one to whom the royal family felt like they had to listen.

After days of frustration, the Saudi king Khalid summoned Sheikh bin Baz and the leading members of the ulama to the capital for a sit-down. And it was a very difficult meeting, because Bin Baz and the others were saying that, well, you know, there are problems in our country. You know, all this, the morals are very loose. There's all these forbidden things happening. We must do something about it.

What were the specific demands? Well, the demands were, for example, more restrictions on women's rights. But most importantly, what they wanted is that they wanted to burst out of Saudi Arabia because they had this global mission of dawah, you know, of spreading the view of Islam to the rest of the misguided Muslim nations. And they needed the backing of the Saudi state for that. The support of the Saudi government allowed the ulama to open schools, mosques, and charities all around the Muslim world, from Nigeria to Indonesia. We have to stop for a second here and emphasize the importance of this

moment. Up until 1979, the Al Saud had made a very specific arrangement deal with the religious establishment. There is no interference in each other's business. The Saudis feared that this arrangement could be in jeopardy if the ulama were able to extract these new demands. But Joe says, even knowing the risks, there really weren't many options for King Khalid and the royal family. He had no choice but to acquiesce to the demands. This was the great bargain between the ulema and the House of Saud in which they said,

OK, we will support you in this critical moment. We will authorize the military operation in the holiest of holies. But in exchange, you know, you will allow us to use the resources of the Saudi state to further our cause throughout the Muslim ummah, the Muslim nation. Were the clerics involved at all in orchestrating this siege? I have seen no evidence

that they actively planned to do this, but they certainly took advantage of this to further their own ideas. It took three long days for the clerics to pen the fatwa allowing for Saudi authorities to use violence to take back the Grand Mosque. The Saudi forces made preparations, and while the clerics had been negotiating the fatwa, the Saudis had finally done another thing. They made public statements

acknowledging that their own people were responsible for the attack. Well, the Saudis had to make this declaration because the Americans were oppressing them.

And the U.S. government was saying, hold on, you have to say it's not us. And so the House of Saud did make these statements and they blamed miscreants.

This is audio of a message Saudi authorities blasted into the mosque over loudspeakers, pleading with the militants to end the takeover. This call was answered with fire and murderous acts on the Muslims by these renegades. Juhayman didn't end it. So within hours of the fatwa being issued, the Saudi forces began their assault to take back the Grand Mosque. Several assaults were conducted. Saudi military brought in armored vehicles, commandos,

and even tanks to dislodge Jahayman and his fighters. Jahayman has spent the week digging in. Initially, they failed. But after taking heavy losses, Saudi security forces finally made their way into the Grand Mosque grounds. You had armored personnel carriers, you know, the M113s, driving into the holy precinct and firing. You know, there was a machine gun position of the rebels just behind the car bodies,

sort of an elliptical wall just in front of it. The Saudis made progress, but at a very high cost. The fighting was intense, and dead bodies littered the grounds of the mosque. But by the end of the first week, they managed to clear out the surface parts of the mosque. Jahayman was prepared for this. His fighters retreated, along with a small number of hostages, to a place beneath the Grand Mosque in Kaaba for their last stand. Under the mosque, there is this warren of labyrinths and catacombs and ancient storage areas that was really hard to penetrate

because how do you go in? It's all booby-trapped. The pressure was continuing to mount on the Saudis to end the siege. And so they really couldn't clear it on their own, and so they had to ask for help. So there were two countries that could help. It was the U.S. and it was France. The problem with the U.S. was that after the Vietnam War, after all the congressional hearings and the imposition of restrictions on the activities of the CIA

and all the leaks that came out, the Saudis didn't really trust the U.S. And so the Saudis had a very good working relationship with the French at the time because the France then was led by a conservative government, much more hardline than the Qatari administration, and much more willing to take action. Then the French sent them a small detachment of officers from the elite counterterrorism force with gas. The French special forces proposed using a non-lethal gas to force out Shahayman's militants. It was supposed to knock out the militants and then the Saudi troops in gas masks would come in and kill them or take them out. When we come back, the brutal ending to the siege of Mecca and how it changed Saudi Arabia. Hi, my name is Edward Morenzi. You're listening to ThruLine. November 28, 1979.

Over a week into the siege, most of the militants had retreated under the mosque grounds. Only a few of the most hardcore militants remained above ground to fight. One of those people was the supposed Mahdi, Muhammad Abdullah. You know, they're stuck there, there is tear gas, there is firing, there is death, there is no medical care.

But they were guided by belief, and the Mahdi itself, the supposed Mahdi, would go into the bullets and not be harmed by them. So there was courage that comes from, you know, believing you will not be harmed. The militants fought back hard, shooting a hail of bullets at the soldiers as they approached. They were fueled by a belief in the Mahdi. Until he was harmed and killed. And then suddenly the belief started to crumble.

This was the guy who was supposed to usher in the end of the world. The militants couldn't believe he was dead. And that really demoralized the ranks. Jahayman had to convince them to stay on and fight. Things were about to get worse for the militants. French troops arrived a few days later. The French troops themselves did not actually go to Mecca. They brought the gas, they trained the Saudis,

and they then stayed in the hotel in Taif. On December 3rd, the Saudi commandos began their final assault to end the siege. They released gas into the underground chambers as they were instructed by the French. A firefight ensued. It was very chaotic. It was an environment where everybody was panicking. In the darkness and crossfire, militants and hostages and soldiers were all killed. By the end of the day, many of the militants were dead, and dozens were arrested, including Jahayman himself.

He was dragged out, his soiled clothes and, you know, his smoke on his face, and brought him out of the cameras. The photos of the captured militants are haunting. There they are, dressed in long robes, some with beards, others as young as teenagers. Covered in dust, most of them had a look of shock and confusion on their faces. It was over. The siege had failed. More than 60 people were arrested. Including Jahayman al-Taybi, they were all tried. And then the world beheaded.

The executions did not all take place in Mecca. They took place throughout Saudi Arabia in order for the government to send a clear message to one and all that the justice of the Al- Al Saud would be imposed in total. Hostages were killed, civilians were killed, troops were killed. Nobody knows exactly how many, because obviously all the numbers that came out from the Saudis after the fact are highly questionable, and the real death toll may be much higher than the few hundred that they say.

This was a horrible event. Weeks of daily warfare. Sometimes hand-to-hand combat. So you can imagine, only you can imagine the damage that was done. And parts of the Kaaba were damaged. There were eyewitnesses that went inside the mosque immediately after the assault. The defiguration of the facility, the blackened walls, the burn, the smell of flesh, and it was a horrible sight. On December 4th, the Saudi government was back in control of the Grand Mosque, and they immediately... Proclaimed a great victory.

Now, the extent of the damage was not known to that side of the world. They actually managed to keep quite a tight lid, not to reveal just how bad things were, just how much destruction there was, just how many casualties there were. The Saudi government did their best to try to erase the event from the memory of its citizens. There was a book published shortly after the siege that contained all the official statements and declarations and kind of the official narrative. That book was taken out of libraries and destroyed. And then suddenly it was forbidden to mention that this has ever happened.

It was wiped off the history books. It was shameful to admit that such a major failure occurred. Also because up until not so long ago, all the people who ran Saudi Arabia at the time were still in power. So, you know, the Ministry of the Interior, the Ministry of Defense, the head of National Guard, they were all either in the same positions or in the case of the head of National Guard, he was the king, up until, you know, just a few years ago. What are the ramifications of this event on Saudi Arabia and the world? Well, the biggest ramification was that it stopped the modernization of Saudi Arabia's society for a very long time. Saudi Arabia became a very conservative country after 1979.

It became very much interested in puritanism. For example, movie theaters were banned. The condition of women became much more difficult. The wearing of abayas, even the burqas to close their faces, became much more prevalent. The liberal approach was essentially in abeyance. So a dark chapter really started in the country. And at the same time, it empowered the conservative clerics of Saudi Arabia to not just control the social developments in the kingdom, but to export a very austere conservative vision of Islam around the world, where it was really very marginal up until then. The religious establishment gained a great deal of power.

They received large sums of money to build many more mosques, to gain control over the curricula for students in universities and schools. So there were lots of peculiarities that suddenly became mainstream. Suddenly, young, illiterate people going to seek some Islamic guidance education all over the world, in a village in Nigeria, you know, or in Java, would suddenly think this is what Islam is. It really gave the Saudi-Arab establishment this massive soft power around the world

and something that really fostered the development of jihadi groups and extremist groups from Nigeria to Indonesia. Even though Jahayman's mission ultimately failed, his actions and his apocalyptic view of Islam's future has had a lasting effect on other extremists. Jahayman was an inspiration to many extremists over the past few decades. Messianic vision that Juhayman had was adopted almost word by word by Islamic State. And they really found inspiration in him. There's no way that Jehman and his followers could have understood the impact they would have. I mean, no one really did. But the fact is, those 15 days pushed Saudi Arabia and many parts of the Islamic world in a new direction.

It allowed what was a fringe ideology, Wahhabism, to have more of an influence globally. In some places, it completely reframed the faith. And in others, it pushed people towards a militant, apocalyptic view that's had profound consequences. And today, we still live in the shadow of the siege of Mecca. That's it for this week's show. I'm Ramtin Arablui. I'm Rand Abdel-Fattah. And you've been listening to ThruLive from NPR.

This episode was produced by me. And me and Jamie York. Lawrence Wu. Lane Kathleen Levinson. Lou Olkowski. Nigeri Eaton. Fact-checking for this episode was done by Stephanie Hayes. Thank you to Mohamed Albertisi.

Alex Curley. Nikolai Hammer. And of to Mohamed Albertisi, Alex Curley, Nikolai Hammer, and of course Run's dad, Na'im, for his voiceover work. Thanks, Baba. Thanks also to Anya Grunman and Jason Fuller. Our music was composed by Ramteen and his band, Drop Electric. If you like something you heard or you have an idea for an episode,

please write us at ThruLine at NPR.org or hit us up on Twitter at ThruLine NPR. Thanks for listening.