Juhayman (November 20, 1979)

On the first day of the Islamic year 1400, Juhayman al Uteybi of the Ikhwan Islamic
revivalists, fired several shots into the air of the Grand Mosque courtyard, signaling the
arrival of the Mahdi – redeemer of Islam. To the shots fired, there chanced an unlikely
narrative: were it not for the 18th century scholar Muhammad Ibn Abdal-Wahhab, who
preached the purification and unification of Islam, Ikhwan would not take form from
Wahhabism; if Juhayman was the descendent of any tribe other than Bedouin, his ties to
Ikhwan would not be a strict one; Juhayman’s father was a vocal dissenter against the
corrupt Saudi rulers whose government was influenced by the ‘infidel’ West, from his
father, perhaps he inherited the same disdain and the will to lead an insurrection ––
however the chain of events may follow, even Wahhab had his descendants.
Above all unlikelihood, there was Mohammed Abdullah al Qahtani, the Mahdi.
Without much convincing, the insurgents were captivated by the similarities between
Qahtani and the predict Mahdi, so much so that their doubtless zeal negated the fact that
he was the wrong man. It was foretold in many ahaadith that the coming Mahdi would
possess the features of the prophet Mohammed: pale skin, tall, broad forehead, a large
birthmark on his right cheek, of Quraysh tribal lineage, and that he must carry the same
name as the prophet; all of which Mohammed Abdullah al Qahtani corresponded with.
To further consummate destiny, time was the crucial and interrelated element. According
to one hadith, the Mahdi was to arrive on the first day of the new century in the Islamic
calendar (November 20, 1979 = 1400) to bring forth justice before the imminent
apocalypse. Juhayman and his men, seeing that the time was ripe, were set on ushering in
this millenarian vision.
* * *
During the Hajj, in the holiest place in Islam, thousands of pilgrims were taken hostage.
All fifty-one gates were chained shut, forming a coop. Those who were unknowing faced
each other or towards God for telltale signs as to the source or reason for the resounding
gunshots.
* * *
As the shooting became more and more sporadic and less frequent from killing off
guards, the crowd came to settle. Juhayman grabbed the microphone from the Imam and
passed it to Sayid, the Mahdi’s older brother and fellow lead conspirator. He spoke, with
the kind of authority garnered by learned clerics, of the nearing apocalypse. The
evidence: the miscreants that occupy the house of Saud and simply the outlook of things.
Modernization and Westernization is synonymous according to Ikhwan. All forms of
angst from encroaching modernity, in the root of it all, were the doings of the infidel
West.
After the proper theological introduction, the Mahdi stepped forward. In his
resolve, he would rid injustice and infidels and unify the world under Islam. Such
revolutionary feat can only be seeded in the Grand Mosque, where an initial obligatory
army of unbelieving Muslims would besiege the Mahdi and his loyalists – they would
defend, prevail, and expand as the prophecy decrees. The perpetrators, obsessed and
eager to sway history, requested all Muslims to offer to the Mahdi the oath of bayat.
Those pilgrims who gave their pledge were free to leave to spread the word that the
Mahdi came. Some stayed, took up arms and joined the movement. Most left, but not all
were quick to leave before Saudi forces stormed the Mosque, catching some pilgrims at
crossfire.
Although the renegades were just over a hundred men, they were well trained and
well stocked in arms. The battle lasted two weeks, with more than 250 casualties. Down
in the Qaboo, where Juhayman and his men stationed their headquarters, smoke and heat
rose from burning tires; urine, feces, and putrefying bodies littered the floor, turning the
place into a steaming latrine. Varied rooms where dead or dying Muslims were splashed
with Zamzam water (from the holy well by the Kaaba), for its faculty to heal, festered
bacteria like a disease-propagating estuary. TOW missiles were fired at minarets that
shielded rebel snipers and M-113s and APCs rumbled through the courtyard, leaving
trails of smithereens. The Grand Mosque was desecrated. Among the desecration was the
dead Mahdi.
* * *
In disturbance to a universe in harmony, the Mahdi was killed by an exploded grenade.
During the battle, the Mahdi would repeatedly exhibit his immortality by dodging bullets.
If a grenade landed near by, he scooped it and returned it within seconds before the
explosion. As the siege was one week in, a truth was revealed to him: that he and the
others had mistaken him to be the ‘Guided One’. One of the grenades the Mahdi picked
up went off before it was tossed, sending piercing shrapnel into his mortal flesh and
carbonizing his lower body. The time of his death was uncertain, but it was not
immediate – when the Saudi forces ousted the rebels, a search crew was dispatched to
find Mohammed Abdullah al Qahtani’s body; the found corpse’s autopsy indicated that
he died days after the impact – In the account of Yaroslav Trofimov’s The Siege of
Mecca, it was alleged that some of the militants who did see the Mahdi’s frayed and
dying body reported it to the most senior members. Juhayman, upon receiving such
information, responded with disbelief and despair. However, he and the rebel leaders
decided to contain their army in ignorance and continue to fight until the very end.

* * *
For the renegades who either witnessed, heard, or concluded the death of the Mahdi and
the surviving captives whose prophecy expired, there was no prospect of salvation and
suicide is forbidden in Islam. As damned as they were, still they played out the unfolding
– that they would be inextricably linked to the uprising and unforgivably convicted as
such. The rebel leader Juhayman was linked to the uprising for years to come as a
revolutionary idol to the Shiite minority. Juhayman, a Sunni, a member of the Shiite
oppressors, emerged as the symbol of defiance to House of Saud.