В тихом омуте черти водятся

Казалось бы, Саудовская Аравия. Островок монархии, спокойствия и просто пустынного лакшери. Но нет, читая строки ниже я буквально обалдел. Причем такое еще и в мечети вытворять, причем в самой крутой мечети исламского мира. Это просто безумное безумие. И заявляние от иранского лидера о том, что случилось, это просто пропагандисткий популизм, который прям в духе нынешней постсоветской диктатуры.

On 20 November 1979 hundreds of armed dissidents stormed into the Grand Mosque in Mecca. The insurgents had placed coffins in the centre of the courtyard, a normal practice for those seeking blessings for the deceased, but inside were riffles which were quickly handed out. This is a place considered so holy in Islam that non-Muslims are not allowed into the city, never mind the mosque. There are signs outside the city limits telling non-Muslims not to come any nearer. It is forbidden to shed blood in the complex and the penalty for transgression is crucifixion. The insurrection was led by a man called Juhayman al-Otaybi, a descendant of the Ikhwan Wahhabi warriors who had fought for the Sauds in the 1920s. His grandfather had ridden alongside Ibn Saud, and his family was one of the most important in the Najd region.

The leadership was stunned. The insurgents had not only desecrated the holy place, they were using the mosque’s loudspeakers to denounce the House of Saud for being corrupt and for allowing foreigners to come to Saudi Arabia and influence the population with their decadent ways. The royal family cleared the whole city of civilians, then went to the religious leaders to obtain a fatwa allowing them to use force to retake the mosque.

After nearly a week of fighting, with heavy losses on both sides, the authorities turned to the French, who had spent years building a solid intelligence-sharing relationship with the Saudis and selling them arms. Amid great secrecy President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing
despatched three members of the GIGN, France’s elite counter-terror unit, to train the Saudi Special Forces. Two weeks after the takeover began it was over. Sixty-three survivors emerged, to be publicly beheaded in various city squares across the country.

The fallout was huge. The revolutionary leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, blamed ‘criminal American imperialism and international Zionism’ for the takeover. leading to riots in several countries and the burning of American embassies in Libya and Pakistan.