Riyadh, November 19: Thirty years ago, as tens of thousands of hajj pilgrims were completing dawn prayers inside Mecca, gunshots pierced the sanctity of the Grand Mosque.
A group of zealots, who claimed to have with them the new redeemer, seized Islam’s holiest site.
The November 20, 1979 takeover of the Grand Mosque by Juhayman al-Oteibi and his 400-plus fundamentalists, and the subsequent unholy, military assault to dislodge them, stunned Muslims worldwide.
Oteibi and 67 fellow militants were ultimately caught and executed, and their leader was shot dead in the battle.
The hajj had just finished when Oteibi and his band smuggled hundreds of assault weapons into the mosque at the center of Mecca.
Angered at what they saw was Saudi society’s plunge into immorality, Oteibi’s act was to herald a new age of purism.
His army took over every corner of the massive walled mosque, locking shut the normally welcoming gates, sending machine-gun armed snipers into the seven minarets, and taking hostage hundreds of the faithful.
Quickly shooting dead two guards who resisted, they denounced Saudi Arabia’s leading clerics as corrupt and the ruling Al-Saud family as illegitimate.
Snipers picked off arriving policemen and soldiers and it would take two weeks and a massive Saudi army effort, that began with shelling the mosque and ended up with hand-to-hand fighting, to regain control.
The official death toll was 127 soldiers, 117 rebels, and an unknown number of civilians.
For most of the three million pilgrims massing in Mecca in the coming week for the hajj, Oteibi’s takeover of the Grand Mosque is likely a vague memory.
—Agencies