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religious values in Saudi Arabia. Flush with oil money, the country was gradually transforming into a consumerist society. Cars and electrical goods were becoming commonplace, the country was urbanising, and in some regions men and women began to mix in public . . . ‘Juhayman’s actions stopped all modernisation,’ Nasser al-Huzaimi [a close follower of Juhayman] says. ‘Let me give you a simple example. One of the things he demanded from the Saudi government was the removal of female presenters from TV. After the Haram incident, no female presenter appeared on TV again.’ Saudi Arabia remained on this ultra-conservative path for most of the next four decades. Only recently have there been signs of a thaw. In an interview in March 2018, Crown Prince Mohammed
Bin Salman, said that before 1979, ‘We were living a normal life like the rest of the Gulf countries, women were driving cars, there were movie theatres in Saudi Arabia.’ He was referring above all to the siege of the Grand Mosque” (ibid.). Al-Gurashi puts the siege in context, identifying ten other attacks throughout history, giving their dates, perpetrators, and the outcome of each, together with security recommendations. He focuses specifically on incidents within the Great Mosque, so excludes “several incidents of violence in the Holy City . . . and the two wars which took place in Makkah . . . for the purpose of gaining control of the city” (pp. 44–7). As his thesis was being presented at California State University, he uses the Christian calendar, giving
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