What were the ideological origins of Al Qaeda and ISIS? Yaroslav Trofimov argues that the answer goes back to 1979, when an uprising occurred in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. For an event that is largely undocumented officially, "The Siege of Mecca: The Forgotten Uprising in Islam's Holiest Shrine and the Birth of Al Qaeda" (2007) is a fascinating historical book – and of what the author argues is the origin of modern Islamic terrorism. The book was written by a journalist, and thus academics searching for references and justification for some of the claims will be left wanting. I located a number of errors as I read through, but the book is nonetheless well worth reading.
Why the author believes this event is so important – and the ideology that drove it - is because Trofimov argues these were the origins of nearly all contemporary extremist movements. The author also outlines that the ideology driving these extremists did not only spread after 1979 naturally - it was actively supported "on the Cold War battlefronts. Instead of being suppressed, Juhayman's brutal brand of Islam was encouraged and nurtured as it metastasized across the planet since 1979" (p. 7). The most well-known instance of this was American support of jihadist movements in Afghanistan, of which Osama bin Laden was a part. The book is also fascinating in that it shows how this event has global impacts - from North Africa to Asia - about which the author includes chapters on.
The book also demonstrates the role of torture and brutal tactics in creating extremists and fostering extremist ideologies: "Like many members of the new movement, Mohammed Abdullah had reasons to dislike the Saudi state. By one account, prior to enrolling in university he was employed as an administrative worker in a Riyadh hospital. Suspicion fell on Mohammed Abdullah when money disappeared from the hospital safe. Saudi police, whose main investigating technique tends to be torture, pulled the young man's fingernails until he confessed to the crime. He was cleared and released from jail only after the real culprit was accidently caught with stolen cash later" (p. 38). Torture resulted in bad intelligence and pushed people into extremism. The person the quote is speaking about, Mohammed Abdullah, went on to become one of the leading members of the group of the 1979 uprising.
A note for the critical reader: the book perpetuates a range of stereotypes about the "Arabs" that are well suited to be examples for an updated version of Edward Said's Orientalism (1979). Even "seemingly reasonable Muslim intellectuals" are irrational (p. 107), are not trustable and do not trust each other (p. 136, 177), while they also have secret, mutually understood bonds between them. The result is that Arabs are portrayed, contradictorily, as idiotic and cunning; untrustworthy and trustworthy; highly skilled and untrained. Tropes of 'the other' that – consciously or not – have long been used as means to uphold one's own supposed superiority.
