Religion is one of the most powerful and pernicious forces humanity has ever unleashed. It captures the natural, human need to believe in an organizing person or principle governing the universe and codifies that belief into a tribal doctrine which only serves to divide people from one another. The moment that we create rules for the proper following of a faith, we create the circumstances by which true believers, true followers, can distinguish themselves from those who do not believe as they do, who do not follow the right path. For humans, the only outcome of this division is war. Thankfully, in the West, the combination of great minds and their scientific endeavors have handed down to us a legacy of inquiry into all questions, creating in our society and our culture a healthy skepticism that allows us to pursue truth. But in other parts of the world, this freedom does not exist. On November 20th, 1979, the world witnessed the consequences of a society pillared on righteousness. And for it, many lives were lost.
The Grand Mosque at Mecca, in Saudi Arabia, is, for Muslims, not only the holiest mosque but the focus point of their prayers. It is the culmination of the annual Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca that each Muslim must complete at least once in their lifetime. As such, it is a symbol of the Islamic faith that, I imagine, is rivaled only by the Quran. In 1979, after years of agitation against the Saudi Arabian monarchy, a group of some 400 Islamic radicals, advocating a return to a strict interpretation of the Quran, seized the Mosque and held it for some two weeks while demanding the abolishment of the monarchy, the end to oil exports to the West, and the expulsion from the Arabian Peninsula of all foreigners. The calamitous response from Saudi authorities not only prolonged the terrorist act, it transformed a controllable situation into an international incident disastrous to Saudi Arabian prestige in the world. After the authorities deployed tanks and commandos against the terrorists, the siege was brought to a bloody and tragic conclusion.
Mr. Trofimov does a wonderful job revealing the many elements of history involved in this ugly incident. His explanation of Wahhabism, that strain of Islamic conservatism that has ideologically fuelled Islamic fundamentalists from Juhayman to Bin Laden, is the clearest articulation I've read of what motivates these zealots to sow their terror. Most memorably, however, is his depiction of the Saudi royal family which manages, somehow, to botch the response to the seizure so badly that they must beg the country's powerful clerics to grant their footsoldiers permission to raid the Mosque with lethal weapons. In exchange for their blessing, the clerics extract from the House of Saud a crackdown on some of the same freedoms the terrorists were agitating against, leaving the reader with the distinct impression that the royal family would have been better off negotiating with the terrorists!
This is excellent work, chronicling an incredibly tragic event. It is not difficult to contemplate these two weeks in 1979 and see in them an explosion of terrorism which fuelled the rise of the Taliban, the disintegration of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the planning and the execution of 9-11. Here are the consequences of zealousness writ large. (4/5 Stars)
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