by Yaroslav TrofimovFrom the publisher:
On November 20, 1979, public attention focused on Tehran, where the Iranian hostage crisis was entering its third week. The same morning–the first of a new Muslim century–hundreds of gunmen stunned the world by seizing Islam’s holiest shrine, the Grand Mosque in Mecca. Armed with rifles that they had smuggled inside coffins, these men came from more than a dozen countries, launching the first operation of global jihad in modern times. Led by a Saudi preacher named Juhayman al Uteybi, they believed that the Saudi royal family had become a craven servant of American infidels, and sought a return to the glory of uncompromising Islam. With nearly 100,000 worshippers trapped inside the holy compound, Mecca’s bloody siege lasted two weeks, inflaming Muslim rage against the U.S. and causing hundreds of deaths.
Despite U.S. assistance, the Saudi royal family proved haplessly incapable of dislodging the occupier, whose ranks included American converts to Islam. In Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini blamed the Great Satan–the U.S.–for defiling the shrine, prompting mobs to storm and torch American embassies in Pakistan and Libya. The desperate Saudis finally enlisted the help of French commandos led by tough-as-nails Captain Paul Barril, who prepared the final assault and supplied poison gas that knocked out the insurgents. Though most captured gunmen were quickly beheaded, the Saudi royal family responded to this unprecedented challenge by compromising with the rebels’ supporters among the kingdom’s most senior clerics, helping them nurture and export Juhayman’s violent brand of Islam around the world.
This dramatic and immensely consequential story was barely covered in the press in the pre-CNN, pre-al-Jazeera days, as Saudi Arabia imposed an information blackout and kept foreign correspondents away. Yaroslav Trofimov now penetrates this veil of silence, interviewing for the first time scores of direct participants in the siege, including former terrorists, and drawing on hundreds of documents that had been declassified on his request. The narrative reveals how Saudi reaction to the uprising in Mecca set free the forces that produced the attacks of 9/11, and the harrowing circumstances that
surround us today.
From the critics:
Trofimov, a Wall Street Journal writer and observer of the Muslim world (Faith at War), tackles an incident unreported in the West: the violent takeover of Islam's holiest shrine by Muslim fundamentalists in 1979. Carrying out his investigations in one of the world's most closed societies, Trofimov has crafted a compelling historical narrative, blending messianic theology with righteous violence, and the Saudi state's sclerotic corruption with the complicity of the official religious institutions. Trofimov aptly points out endemic regional problems with enduring repercussions for fighting terror, but is hampered by his sensationalist style ("The world was twelve months away from the tumultuous events that would cover the mosque's marble courtyard with blood, spilled guts and severed limbs"). In 1979, the Saudi intelligence services apparently had no accurate blueprints of the Grand Mosque, and knew nothing of the underground labyrinth where many of the militants took shelter; they eventually received plans to the site from Osama bin Laden's older brother. Ringleader Juhayman and his followers have inspired al-Qaeda and countless other Islamic revivalist movements to ever greater acts of violence, even though they were mesmerized by their limited understanding of an obscurantist theology and were convinced that that one of their unassuming members was the Messiah. Casual readers will be well served by this introduction to Muslim fundamentalist terrorism. - Publishers Weekly
Had there been no 11/20/79, there might never have been a 9/11/01: 20-20 hindsight meets solid journalistic and storytelling skills in this latest work by sometime Wall Street Journal correspondent Trofimov (Faith at War: A Journey on the Frontlines of Islam, from Baghdad to Timbuktu, 2005). At the dawn of the 15th century, by the Islamic calendar, an armed gang led by radical Islamist Juhayman al Uteybi seized the Grand Mosque of Mecca, one of Islam's most sacred sites, to protest the Saudi government's corruption and illegitimacy as an ally of the West. The new year's celebration was a day on which natives of the city mingled with foreign visitors, allowing the conspirators, among them Saudis, Pakistanis, Indians, Egyptians, Burmese, Afghans and even one American, fairly easy access into the holy precinct. There they holed up and battled a succession of Saudi military assaults, "a drawn-out battle that would drench Mecca in blood, marking a watershed moment for the Islamic world and the West." These events were overshadowed by the seizure in Iran of the U.S. embassy, but it did not escape watchful militants in the Islamic world that the siege was finally broken when French special forces commandos entered Mecca-supposedly off-limits to infidels-and restored order. Saudis formerly loyal to the House of Saud were so shocked at the intervention that they became radicalized opponents of the regime; one such convert was Osama bin Laden, whose family was closely allied with the royals. These newly forged militants were also emboldened by the decision, under the Carter administration, to reduce the formal American presence in the Muslim world after Tehran and Mecca. Juhayman's Islamistmessage, writes Trofimov, was in great degree the one Al Qaeda and its allies espouse today-and, as today, though Sunni in origin, that message is also turning Shiites to the cause of anti-Western jihad. It has taken nearly 30 years to comprehend these events in their proper context, and Trofimov does excellent work in narrating them in that light. - Kirkus
