A bit of history I do not recall - the siege of Mecca

I really do not remember this. I was about halfway through my second year at Ball State, probably home for Thanksgiving Break, but I read The Siege of Mecca, by Yaroslav Trofimov in The Sunday Herald and nothing clicked. As presented there, I think we all might have missed something important.

"IN THE Islamic calendar, Thursday, November 20, 1979 was the first day of the year 1400, the start of a new century. It was also the day that a force of armed Muslim zealots led by a 43-year-old Saudi called Juhayman al Utaybi and a strange young man called Mohammed Abdullah, who saw himself as the Mahdi (the Islamic redeemer), took over the Grand Mosque in Mecca. They believed that once they had seized Islam's holiest place it would prompt the Saudi people to rise and sweep away the corrupt, pro-western regime of King Khaled and replace it with a pure Muslim state which, led by the Mahdi, would conquer the world for Islam."

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When the fundamentalists struck at the Grand Mosque the Saudi regime of King Khaled didn't know what to do. If Saudi troops stormed the mosque - Islam's holiest place - would they be committing a great blasphemy? If troops were killed would they die as religious martyrs or would they burn in hell? Serious questions which only a fatwah from the country's religious leaders could resolve.

And, according to Trofimov, those leaders drove a hard bargain. Here's how he describes what was agreed: "There should be no more women on TV, no more licentious movies, no more alcohol. The social liberalisation that had begun under King Faisal should be halted and, where possible, rolled back. And billions of Saudi petrodollars should be put to good use, spreading the rigid Wahhabi Islam around the planet."