Lawrence, look into the "unofficial accounts" of what happened. I was living in Europe at the time and knew many wealthy Arabs from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and so on. The Saudi used methods that even today aren't acknowledged.
You don't mention the aftermath of the event. Many Arabs suspected the USA was behind the seizure (as part of an attempt by the USA to seize Saudi oil). Enraged mobs attacked US embassies and the US embassy in both Libya and Pakistan were burnt to the ground. In Pakistan, the military stood by and watched. The mob was organized and trucked in by our allies, the Pakistani government. By incredible luck, only one American died. It would have been devastating if the mob had killed the entire embassy.
A few weeks later, the USSR brought troops into Afghanistan to support their embattled government. The jihad against the Soviets started and eventually, the Soviet military was thrown out of Afghanistan. They were unable to win an insurgency by military means.
Those same mobs, yes, that same government that burnt down the US embassy in Islamabad went on to become a principle ally of the CIA in the jihad against the USSR. One of the principle ogranizers of the CIA-led anti-Soviet jihad was... Osama bin Laden. The Pakistan CIA also sponsored the Taliban, who went on to take over Afghanistan.
Ten years later, General Zia was assasinated. His airplane exploded. Many Arabs whom I know are convinced the CIA killed Zia in retaliation for the burning of the US embassy. I doubt this; the US ambassador died in the crash.
Iran (which is Shiite) doesn't like the Taliban (who are Sunni). They don't want a Pakistani-sponsored government on their borders. Thus Iran helped the US in the 9.11 attack on the Taliban. Today, the US-sponsored government in Afghanistan would collapse if Iran withdraws its support. If the USA annoys Iran too much (say, an idiotic US Navy attack with missiles), they withdraw their support, the Afghanistan project collapses, and the jihad will claim a second victory against a superpower.
The Grand Mosque attack was a crucial point in the Islamic world. We have been living in the aftermath of it for 25 years now. The dominos still haven't stopped falling.
You should be careful in thinking that Leftists don't support the royal Saudi government. Bush himself hopes to topple the king of Saudi Arabia.
You continue to insist on "logic", but as I point out above, the Middle East is convoluted and contradictory. That's one of the reasons you end up with meaningless conclusions. Quite logical, yes, but no facts.
yrs, andreas www.andreas.com----- Original Message ----- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Lit-Ideas" <Lit-Ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Saturday, January 13, 2007 11:00 AM Subject: [lit-ideas] The Seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca I’ve been reading Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower. In each of his chapters there are details that are new to me. For example, consider the famous case of the seizure of the Grand Mosque of Mecca on November 20, 1979, I had never heard this tale told so entertainingly. Osama’s colorful brother Salem bin Laden is introduced, not because he is vital to the events but because it is interesting to hear that he came riding up on the hood of his car brandishing a machine gun. It is also interesting to hear about the jokes he played on the king who liked and tolerated him: “Once, according to family legend, Salem had a hemorrhoid operation, and he had a videotape of the procedure sent to the king.” Wright tells us that “In this stoic culture, few people – perhaps no one else – exercised such rough liberties.” But back to the rebels: “That morning at dawn, the aged imam of the Grand Mosque of Mecca, Sheikh Mohammed al-Subayil, had been preparing to lead the prayers of fifty thousand Muslims gathered for the final day of hajj. As he approached the microphone, he was shoved aside, and a burst of gunfire echoed in the holy sanctuary. A ragged band of insurgents standing among the worshipers suddenly pulled rifles from under their robes. They chained the gates closed, trapping the pilgrims inside, and killed several policemen. ‘Your attention, O Muslims!’ a rough-looking man with an untrimmed beard cried, ‘Allahu akhbar!’ – God is great – ‘The Mahdi has appeared!” “‘The Mahdi! The Mahdi’ the armed men cried.” A belief in the return of the Mahdi is a characteristic of Shiite rather than Sunni theology, but, Wright tells us, there are some Wahhabi’s who believe in the Mahdi as well, including the group that took over the Grand Mosque. “The man claiming to be the Mahdi was Mohammed Abdullah al-Qahtani, but the real leader of the revolt was Juhayman al-Oteibi, a fundamentalist preacher and former corporal in the National Guard. The two men had been imprisoned together for sedition, and it was during that time, Oteibi claimed, that God had revealed to him in a dream that Qahtani was the Mahdi. “Qahtani was persuaded by Oteibi’s dream that he must be the chosen one. When the two men got out of prison, he married Oteibi’s sister. Soon they began attracting followers with their messianic message, especially young theology students from the Islamic University in Medina, a center of Muslim Brothers radicalism. . . .” Now here I would expect to hear how Qahtani was able to meld Qutbism (for that is another name for the Muslim Brothers’ radicalism at that time) with a belief in the Mahdi, but he is more interested in the tale than in the theology. To enter into that situation at that time is tantamount to returning back in time to the 7th century. “The leader of the ulema was Absul Azis bin Baz, blind, seventy years old, an eminent religious scholar but a man who was suspicious of science and hostile to modernity. He claimed that the sun rotated around the earth and that the manned landing on the moon had never occurred. Now bin Baz found himself in an awkward and compromised position: Oteibi had been his student in Medina.” The government needed his approval before they could breach this holy shrine, free the pilgrims and oust the rebels, but that was finally sorted out and now all the Saudi government had to do was figure out a way to do that while minimizing damage to the shrine and rescuing as many pilgrims as possible. Oteibi presented typical Qutbist-type Islamist demands: “Oteibi insisted on the adoption of Islamic, non-Western values and the rupture of diplomatic relations with Western countries, thus rolling back the changes that had opened the society up to modernity. The Saudi Arabia these men wanted to create would be radically isolated. The royal family would be thrown out of power, and there would be a full accounting of the money that they had taken from the Saudi people. Not only the king but also the ulema who countenanced his rule would be denounced as sinful and unjust. Oil exports to the United States would be cut off, and all foreign civilian and military experts would be expelled from the Arabian Peninsula. These demands foreshadowed those that Osama bin Laden would make fifteen years later.” I suspect some of our Lit-Ideas Leftists will sympathize with some of those demands, but suffice it to say that neither the Saudi government nor the Saudi ulema did. But they soon decided they needed outside help, so the man in charge, Turki, called in the French. “He had found that when immediate action was needed, the French were less complicated than the Americans. . . .” So some French agents were converted to Islam (you can’t get into the Grand Mosque without being Muslim) and went in to try and sort things out. But the French plan, while clever, didn’t work. In frustration apparently the French & Saudis kept after the rebels throwing grenades, trying not to kill too many pilgrims, and backed them up into an open space where snipers began picking them off. As the rebels were killed, women would hack up their faces so they couldn’t be identified later, presumably to keep their families and friends out of trouble. The Mahdi didn’t survive but Oteibi did. The Saudi leader Turki went to visit him in the hospital. “Oteibi jumped off the bed, grabbed the prince’s hand, and kissed it. ‘Please ask King Khaled to forgive me!’ He cried. ‘I promise not to do it again.’” However, Oteibi was not forgiven. “The government divided Oteibi and sixty-two of his disciples among eight different cities where, on January 9, 1980, they were beheaded. It was the largest execution in Saudi Arabian history. “The Saudi government admitted that 127 of its men had been killed in the uprising and 461 injured. About a dozen worshipers were killed, along with 117 rebels. Unofficial accounts, however put the number of deaths at more than 4,000. In any case, the Kingdom was traumatized. The holiest place in the world had been defiled – by Muslims. . . .” What of Osama bin Laden, you might ask? He “and his brother Mahrous were arrested in the early days of the siege. “At the time of the arrest, the brothers professed to be unaware that the siege had taken place. They stayed in custody for a day or two, but their social prominence protected them. Osama remained secluded in his house for a week. He had been opposed to Oteibi and the extreme Salafists who surrounded him. Five years late, however, he would tell a fellow mujahideen in Peshawar that Oteibi and his followers were true Muslims who were innocent of any crime.” Lawrence -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. 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