The Siege of Mecca

 

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A Washington Post Book World Best Book of 2007

"Yaroslav Trofimov has written a spellbinding thriller...Once I started reading, I couldn't put the book down."— Rajiv Chandrasekaran, author of Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone

The Siege of Mecca book coverOn November 20, 1979, worldwide attention was 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 United States and causing hundreds of deaths.