Thirty years ago this month, religious extremists pulled off an audacious attack on Islam’s holiest site in Mecca, storming the Grand Mosque in Mecca at the start of the hajj, and demanding an end to the Saudi rulers’ process of modernising the country.

A media blackout and the developing Iran hostage crisis helped keep the story off the front pages, but what followed led to the Faustian pact between the Saudi royal family and religious conservatives that sparked the growth of global Wahhabism, and the religious fundamentalist movement it spawned.

With the help of an interview with Yaroslav Trofimov, foreign correspondent for the Wall Street and one of the few writers to study the siege and its impact, our friends at the new website ‘The Samosa’ have taken a look at this under-reported event and how it influenced the world we live in today, radicalising Osama bin Laden and helping to fund the Taliban.

You can read the whole story here.

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1. Liberal Conspiracy

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3. subme

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