How Saudi Arabia Went Back In Time After The 1979 Grand Mosque Siege (كيف عادت المملكة العربية السعودية في الوقت بعد حصار الحرمين الشريفين عام 1979)
For decades, the infamous name Juhayman Al-Otaibi had been buried in the memories of Gen X Saudis. On Nov. 20, 1979, a well-organized group of terrorists stormed Makkah’s Grand Mosque, killing and wounding hundreds of worshippers and hostages in what came to be one of Saudi Arabia’s darkest days. Al-Otaibi was the mastermind behind the terrorist attack. Fast forward four decades, and in his first American TV interview — with CBS’s “60 Minutes” — Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman vowed to bring back the Kingdom’s pre-1979 moderation. “We were living a very normal life like the rest of the Gulf countries,” he said. “Women were driving cars. There were movie theaters in Saudi Arabia. Women worked everywhere. We were just normal people developing like any other country in the world until the events of 1979.” Al-Otaibi committed an atrocity in the name of religion, seizing the Grand Mosque for two weeks in a standoff with Saudi special forces. Photos taken from fighter...
