A report on Saudi Arabia, Grand Mosque seizure, Wahhabism and Ikhwan

The Grand Mosque seizure occurred during November and December 1979 when extremist insurgents calling for the overthrow of the House of Saud took over Masjid al-Haram, the holiest mosque in Islam, in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

The Ikhwan (الإخوان, The Brethren), commonly known as Ikhwan men taa Allah (إخوان من أطاع الله), was a Wahhabi religious militia made up of traditionally nomadic tribesmen which formed a significant military force of the ruler Ibn Saud and played an important role in establishing him as ruler of most of the Arabian Peninsula in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

In 1744, Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhab formed a pact with a local leader, Muhammad bin Saud, a politico-religious alliance that continued for the next 150 years, culminating politically with the proclamation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932.

Juhayman's grandfather, Sultan bin Bajad al-Otaybi, had ridden with Ibn Saud in the early decades of the century, and other Otaibah family members were among foremost of the Ikhwan.

The ultraconservative Wahhabi religious movement within Sunni Islam has been described as a "predominant feature of Saudi culture", although the power of the religious establishment has been significantly eroded in the 2010s.

They differed from the original Ikhwan and other earlier Wahhabi purists in that "they were millenarians, they rejected the monarchy and condemned the Wahhabi ulama."

Insurgents who participated in the 1979 Grand Mosque seizure in Mecca referred to themselves as the 'al-Ikhwan', thus in their eyes justifying the seizure as a means to liberate the Kingdom from what they deemed as 'Western apostasy'.

However, in the last couple of decades of the twentieth century several crises worked to erode Wahhabi "credibility" in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Muslim world – the November 1979 seizure of the Grand Mosque by militants; the deployment of US troops in Saudi Arabia during the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq; and the September 11, 2001 al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington.

Ibn Saud gained the support of the Ikhwan, a tribal army inspired by Wahhabism and led by Faisal Al-Dawish, and which had grown quickly after its foundation in 1912.

The second event was the Grand Mosque Seizure in Mecca by Islamist extremists.

As the realm of Wahhabism expanded under Ibn Saud into Shiite areas (al-Hasa, conquered in 1913) and Hejaz (conquered in 1924–25), radical factions amongst Wahhabis such as the Ikhwan pressed for forced conversion of Shia and an eradication of (what they saw as) idolatry.