Word: meccas
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Saudi Arabia, where a feudal monarchy rules a sparsely settled (estimated pop. between 4 million and 7 million) land containing 23.2% of the world's proven oil reserves. The ruling House of Saud was badly shaken by last month's attack on the Sacred Mosque in Mecca, the holiest shrine in Islam. It was originally reported that the attacking guerrillas were religious fundamentalists who were seeking the recognition of their leader as the Muslim Mahdi or Messiah. Saudi officials later confirmed that although some of the intruders were indeed religious zealots, the majority were politically motivated guerrillas...
...operation in Mecca had been intricately planned. For weeks before, the guerrillas had been squirreling away small weapons and food supplies inside the mosque. After the attack began, they concealed their dead and wounded in order to make the government think that the rebel casualties were light. When the two-week siege was finally over, the Saudi national guardsmen discovered the bodies of 300 guerrillas. Most of their faces had been deliberately burned by their surviving comrades to conceal the victims' identities. Some 160 of the intruders were captured, and will be tried on charges of defacing a holy...
...transcend Iranian nationalism and export his fundamentalist Islamic revival. The prospect of such contagious piety disturbs other Muslim leaders, the Saudi royal family, for example. But it also raises apprehension and a certain amount of bewilderment in the West. When Mahdist Saudi zealots took over the mosque in Mecca last month, the Islamic world displayed a disconcerting readiness to believe Khomeini's incendiary report that the attack had been the work of Zionists and U.S. imperialists. "The Americans have done it again," many Muslims told themselves reflexively. Some Americans have responded by asking with a truculent innocence: "What...
...religious and tribal instability that afflicted the deposed Shah. The Saudis, whose semifeudal society is trying to cope with both Western technology and hordes of unassimilated foreigners, are exceedingly vulnerable to both external and internal threats. That was proved by the recent seizure of the Sacred Mosque in Mecca by a band of religious fundamentalists who were well trained in guerrilla warfare...
Mohammed al-Quraishi's eyes burned with ambition. He was 26 and for six months he had studied theology in Mecca; he said that the Islamic revolt in Iran heralded a new dawn. Two weeks ago, he and his followers seized the Sacred Mosque in Mecca. It is Islam's holiest of holy places, since it contains the Kaba, a cube-shaped structure that is believed to have been built by Abraham in God's honor. Last week the siege was lifted after eight days of fighting; but the assault had shaken the Islamic world and rocked...