It was 1979 (not 2003) that Unleashed Political Islam

And what radicalized bin Laden? It was the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. That's what started it all.

(And that's when they had an important victory)

Well, I cannot speak to what radicalized bin Laden, so I will take your word as authority.

But it wasn't until 1996 that bin Laden issued a fatwa against the United States titled "Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places".

Sorry but radicals tried to overthrow Nasser in 60s, kidnapped Israeli athetes in 72, etc. Islam has been a problem for 1000 years.

I read an article that said the rise of Iran and Iraq began with the tribes organized by Lawrence of Arabia to fight the turks

"And what radicalized bin Laden? It was the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. That's what started it all."

The Afghanistan invasion gave birth to both the Taliban and Al Qada and it's when he got radicalized. My point was he was not looking to attack the United States until the First Gulf War. In fact, before then, my guess is they were grateful to us for giving them assistance against the Soviet invasion. I don't really care when they got radicalized. It's when these Islamo Fascist crazies started targeting America and that all started with the Islamic revolution.

That is the point of the article. Islamo fascist crazies have probably been around since after WWI and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the Sykes/Picot agreement and the Europeans splitting up these countries. And then in 1948 when the state of Israel was created. However, there was no Islamo/Fascist radical group that was out to take out America in the 20's - 1979. Actual state sponsored and huge Islamo Fascist groups like Al Qada with the purpose of attacking America only started happening after the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979.

The same day that our Embassy in Tehran was overrun the first time, February 14, 1979, our Ambassador to Afghanistan, Spike Dubs, was assassinated in Kabul.

I was in Tehran at the time. There is no doubt that the rise of Islamic fundamentalism started in 1979 when Khomeini hijacked the Iranian Revolution.

Didn't anyone watch Argo? Have we forgotten about the Iran Hostage Crisis?

Jesus Christ - people still have not learned the difference between Shia and Sunni, Arab and Iranian.

I wonder why no one in the west ever comments on the Sunni Muslim Mosque siege of 1979? What happened in Iran was linked to the Shia but in 1979 Sunni fanatics declared there was a Mahdi and took over the Kaba Mosque. It took French mercenaries and Pakistanis to take it back in bloody fighting.

Before that the Saudis were modernizing and allowed for television (that freaked the Wahabist out) and they banned slavery in 1965 and other "reforms". The Mosque siege so freaked out the Saudis that they made a deal with the religious fanatics to become even more religious in their laws and to fund wahabist mosques all over the world.

With the start of the Afghan war the Saudis had a way to export their hotheads to die in jihad. I think I read somewhere that Osama Bin Laden was deeply affected by the Mosque siege and may have been a sympathizer.

Ignore Iran - in regards to ISIS and al-Qaeda Iran is meaningless because they are Persians and Shia.

Here is a good place to explain the current Sunni Arab world:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112051155

1979: Remembering 'The Siege Of Mecca' 7:48 Queue Download Embed Transcript Facebook Twitter Google+ Email August 20, 20096:00 AM ET Heard on Morning Edition Yaroslav Trofimov, a reporter with The Wall Street Journal, talks about the 1979 siege of the Grand Mosque at Mecca in Saudi Arabia. It is the holiest site in Islam, and gunmen held it for two weeks. It was one of the events that gave rise to al-Qaida, and Yaroslav wrote about it in his book The Siege of Mecca.

I wonder why no one in the west ever comments on the Sunni Muslim Mosque siege of 1979? What happened in Iran was linked to the Shia but in 1979 Sunni fanatics declared there was a Mahdi and took over the Kaaba Mosque. It took French mercenaries and Pakistanis to take it back in bloody fighting.

The seizure of the Kaaba in Mecca on November 20, 1979 was one of the consequences of the Iranian Revolution. Many of the demands of the occupiers mirrored what Khomeini used to topple the Shah, i.e., a repudiation of the West and its influences, a return to the fundamentals of Islam, and the removal of the country's rulers, the House of Saud.

Juhayman had turned against al-Baaz, "and began advocating a return to the original ways of Islam, among other things; a repudiation of the West; abolition of television and expulsion of non-Muslims." He proclaimed that "the ruling Al-Saud dynasty had lost its legitimacy because it was corrupt, ostentatious and had destroyed Saudi culture by an aggressive policy of Westernization."

The successful Iranian Revolution that deposed the Shah, installed Khomeini as the head of a theocratic state, and resulted in the mass exodus of Westerners from Iran were the inspiration for Juhayman al-Otaybi, a member of an influential family in Najd. The departure of the Shah from Iran on January 16, 1979 marked the end of US influence in Iran. And the seizure of our Embassy on November 4, 1979 coupled with a weak response by Carter signaled to the rest of the world that radical, Islamic fundamentalism could defeat the West and that they should not be feared. The Kaaba was seized two weeks later on November 20.

Shortly after news of the takeover was released, the new Islamic revolutionary leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini told radio listeners, "It is not beyond guessing that this is the work of criminal American imperialism and international Zionism." Anger fueled by these rumors spread anti-American demonstrations throughout the Muslim world—in the Philippines, Turkey, Bangladesh, eastern Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Pakistan.] In Islamabad, Pakistan, on the day following the takeover, the U.S. embassy in that city was overrun by a mob, which burned the embassy to the ground. A week later, in Tripoli, Libya, another mob attacked and burned the U.S. embassy.

Before that the Saudis were modernizing and allowed for television (that freaked the Wahabist out) and they banned slavery in 1965 and other "reforms". The Mosque siege so freaked out the Saudis that they made a deal with the religious fanatics to become even more religious in their laws and to fund wahabist mosques all over the world.

The Saudi Royal Family was spooked by what happened to the Shah in Iran and the seizure of the Grand Mosque. They did not want to suffer a similar fate as the Shah. They understood their unique role in Islam. The Saudi King started using the title of Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques in 1986 with King Fahd. FYI: The Saudis have television and have had for decades. It is state controlled but satellite dishes abound.

With the start of the Afghan war the Saudis had a way to export their hotheads to die in jihad. I think I read somewhere that Osama Bin Laden was deeply affected by the Mosque siege and may have been a sympathizer.

You need to read OBL's fatwas. In August of 1996, Osama bin Laden issued his first fatwa, a 30-page polemic entitled "Declaration of War Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places," against the United States and Israel, and it was published in a London newspaper called Al Quds al Arabi. /

The second fatwa was published on February 23, 1998, in Al Quds al Arabi. Unlike the first fatwa, which was issued by Osama bin Laden alone, this fatwa was signed by Osama bin Laden; Ayman al-Zawahiri, leader of Jihad group in Egypt and al Qaeda second-in-command; Abu-Yasir Rafa'l Ahmad Taha, leader of the Islamic Group; Sheikh Mir Hamzah, secretary of the Jumiat-ut-Ulema-e-Pakistan; and Fazlul Rahman, leader of the Jihad Movement in Bangladesh.

OBL was a wanted man in Saudi Arabia. The Royal Family deemed him a dangerous enemy.

The US was engaged with the Saudis and others to oust the Soviets from Afghanistan. We provided money and arms and the Saudis acted as our surrogates in various ways. The Soviets invaded Afghanistan on December 25, 1979.

It is also worth noting that Iraq invaded Iran on September 22, 1980. It followed a long history of border disputes, and was motivated by fears that the Iranian Revolution in 1979 would inspire insurgency among Iraq's long-suppressed Shi'i majority, as well as Iraq's desire to replace Iran as the dominant Persian Gulf state.

Ignore Iran - in regards to ISIS and al-Qaeda Iran is meaningless because they are Persians and Shia.

No, ISIS and AQ are the children of the Iranian Revolution and Khomeini.

The Siege of Mecca The Forgotten Uprising in Islam's Holiest Shrine and the Birth of al Qaeda

The government was stunned and slow in understanding what was happening. They tried to seal off news of the event to the outside world, but some Americans managed to notify the Carter administration in Washington. Washington played on fears of its enemy, Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini, which was holding hostages at the U.S. embassy. An assumption was made that the rebels at the Grand Mosque were Shia spreading Khomeini's revolution. This was passed to the media, an article in the New York Times quoting an American official who described the militants in Mecca as likely to be responding to Khomeini's call for an "uprising by fundamentalist Muslims." President Carter decided that he had to act, and he ordered a battle group from Subic Bay in the Philippines including the carrier Kitty Hawk to the Persian Gulf to enhance Saudi Arabia's sense of security.

The rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and its fervent anti-Shi’ite worldview has once again sparked the debate about the “age-old” conflict between Shi’ites and Sunnis with countless “experts” offering analysis rife with clichés that the two largest Islamic sects have been fighting each other for “centuries” and even “millennia.” A brief glance at history not only dispels this notion but demonstrates that the rise of Shi’ite-Sunni sectarian warfare has its roots not in the distant 7th century, but in Saudi Arabia’s response to Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979, when the Saudi regime as a matter of policy began to counter Iran’s revolution by financing anti-Shi’ite Islamists across the Muslim world. That policy has born fruition with Islamists in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and elsewhere taking up arms in the name of an Islam that is diametrically opposed to Shi’ism, the minority sect in Islam.

Read my post #28.

Saudi Disinfo bullshit.

1979: Remembering 'The Siege Of Mecca'

Mr. TROFIMOV: Now, at the time, nobody knew about the existence of this Sunni jihadi fundamentalist ideology that later evolved into what is known today as al-Qaida. In fact, the assumption in Washington at the time was that the Shiites, the Iranian Shiites, had taken over the mosque and is also part of the Iranian revolutionary expansion to the rest of the Muslim world.

INSKEEP: After your exhaustive investigation of this, you concluded the real culprits were Sunni Muslim fundamentalists. And can you draw a fairly straight line from those Sunni Muslim fundamentalists to the Sunni Muslim fundamentalists who form the leadership of al-Qaida today?

Mr. TROFIMOV: There is a very direct connection. First of all, this was the first time that the two components of al-Qaida today - the Wahabi zealots from Saudi Arabia and the jihadi extremists, the outgrowth of the Islam Brotherhood in Egypt - have come together. Just as today's al-Qaida is lead by Osama bin Laden, a Saudi, and Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian, a veteran of the jihadist groups there, so was this movement in Mecca. The senior leaders there were Egyptians.

It was giving them unbelievable amounts of oil money that enabled their evil barbarity.

Political bungling didn’t help but if they were still as poor as NK, they would still be contained, slaughtering each other, instead of invading Europe and the west in general.

What a coinky dink that it just suddenly became evil personified for the west to produce it’s own oil.

Saudi Disinfo bullshit.

More Iranian apologist crap. The Iranian Revolution spawned all that followed, including the seizure of the Kaaba.

I suggest you read the link I provided, The Siege of Mecca The Forgotten Uprising in Islam's Holiest Shrine and the Birth of al Qaeda by Yaroslav Trofimov

The point is now whether Sunnis perpetrated the seizure of the Kaaba, but what were their motivations and why the Saudis responded the way they did. You just have to take a look at the chronology of events in 1978 and 1979 to see how the Iranian Revolution influenced so many events around the world. The rise of militant Islamic fundamentalism sent shock-waves throughout the Muslim world in much the same way as the Arab Spring.

Khomeini was an existential threat to the Saudi Royal Family as was OBL. The Saudis beheaded the perpetrators of the seizure of the Kaaba. The Saudi reaction to the seizure of the Grand Mosque was to prevent a similar event happening in the Kingdom. Khomeini's incendiary remarks after the seizure is evidence that he was trying to capitalize on the event.

The revolution was doubtless a watershed moment in the history of the region and beyond. After assuming power, Ayatollah Khomeini did not hesitate to challenge the status quo of the entire region in a radical way. He called upon all Muslims, irrespective of sect, to rise up as Iranians had done and rid their countries of monarchies and western-backed dictators. His call did not fall on deaf ears.

Iran became an exemplar for action which, coupled with complex local circumstances, proved very consequential. Shi’ites led by Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir as-Sadr, the so-called “Khomeini of Iraq,” led a revolt against Saddam’s Ba’athist rule in 1980, and a four-month uprising in Saudi Arabia engulfed the peninsula’s east. What’s more, Kuwaiti militants unleashed a bombing campaign, and there was an attempted Iranian-inspired coup in Bahrain. Even Sunni Islamists across the region found inspiration in Iran’s revolution and Iran supported Sunni Muslims in Bosnia during the Balkan Wars and Palestinians via radical Sunni Islamist groups such as Islamic Jihad and Hamas.

Khomeini held special disdain for the Saudi monarchy and challenged the dynasty’s Islamic credentials. In an attempt to buttress his Islamic authority, the Saudi monarch exploited the legitimacy that Mecca and Medina afforded him by adopting the title “Custodian of the Two Holy Sites.” Furthermore, the Saudis took a more proactive anti-Shi’ite and anti-Iranian approach in their foreign policy in order to inundate Iran’s revolutionary message.

Thus, although the Shi’ite-Sunni divide has its origins in Islam’s early years, its explosive modern ramifications, which are manifest in ISIS’s puritanical and venomous anti-Shi’ism, are more directly a consequence of Saudi foreign policy since 1979. Prior to Iran’s revolution, Iran and Saudi Arabia worked closely to counter common threats. They parted ways after the Iranian Revolution when the Saudis responded to Khomeini’s revolutionary call by de-legitimizing Shi’ites across the Muslim world as a means by which to counter Iran’s ideological challenge and safeguard the continuity of the Saudi royal family’s rule.

The link I provided is to an interview with the author of the book that shows the Shia has zero to do with the Mosque siege and in fact the Saudis sought to blame the Iranians to deflect away from the real culprits. . The Siege of Mecca The Forgotten Uprising in Islam's Holiest Shrine and the Birth of al Qaeda by Yaroslav Trofimov in his own words:

Mr. TROFIMOV: Now, at the time, nobody knew about the existence of this Sunni jihadi fundamentalist ideology that later evolved into what is known today as al-Qaida. In fact, the assumption in Washington at the time was that the Shiites, the Iranian Shiites, had taken over the mosque and is also part of the Iranian revolutionary expansion to the rest of the Muslim world. INSKEEP: After your exhaustive investigation of this, you concluded the real culprits were Sunni Muslim fundamentalists. And can you draw a fairly straight line from those Sunni Muslim fundamentalists to the Sunni Muslim fundamentalists who form the leadership of al-Qaida today? Mr. TROFIMOV: There is a very direct connection. First of all, this was the first time that the two components of al-Qaida today - the Wahabi zealots from Saudi Arabia and the jihadi extremists, the outgrowth of the Islam Brotherhood in Egypt - have come together. Just as today's al-Qaida is lead by Osama bin Laden, a Saudi, and Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian, a veteran of the jihadist groups there, so was this movement in Mecca. The senior leaders there were Egyptians.

The link I provided is to an interview with the author of the book that shows the Shia has zero to do with the Mosque siege and in fact the Saudis sought to blame the Iranians to deflect away from the real culprits.

You are missing the point. The issue is what is the seminal event that has led to Islamic terrorism throughout the world. I posit that it has been the Iranian Revolution.

When I arrived in Tehran in 1977, Iran was a solid US ally. There were over 70,000 Americans in Tehran. You could buy Playboy off the newsstands. Women were in Western dress. There were over 50,000 Iranians studying in the US, the largest of any country. There was a permanent official Israeli trade mission in Tehran. Iranian relations with Israel and the Saudis were excellent.

The Iranian Revolution reversed it all and literally on the arrival of Khomeini in the country in early February 1979. I left on March 31, 1979. It was a different country overnight. The women all were in chadors. The armed mujaheddin roamed the streets. And on Feb 14, 1979 our embassy was overrun and occupied for over three months, which included looting and harassment.

Khomeini provided money, training, and arms to both Hizballah (Shi'a) and Hamas (Sunni). Iran continues to do so along with assisting Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza.

Iran views Syria as a crucial causeway in its weapons supply route to Lebanese Hizballah, its primary beneficiary, and as a key pillar in its “resistance” front. In 2014, Iran continued to provide arms, financing, training, and the facilitation of primarily Iraqi Shia and Afghan fighters to support the Asad regime’s brutal crackdown that has resulted in the deaths of at least 191,000 people in Syria, according to August UN estimates. Iran publicly admits to sending members of the IRGC to Syria in an advisory role. There is consistent media reporting that some of these troops are IRGC-QF members and that they have taken part in direct combat operations.

The bottom line is that Iran remains the biggest state sponsor of terrorism and it really matters not if they are Shi'a or Sunni.

Iran remained unwilling to bring to justice senior al-Qa’ida (AQ) members it continued to detain, and refused to publicly identify those senior members in its custody. Iran previously allowed AQ facilitators to operate a core facilitation pipeline through Iran since at least 2009, enabling AQ to move funds and fighters to South Asia and Syria.

The U.S. indictment of bin Laden filed in 1998 stated that al-Qaeda "forged alliances . . . with the government of Iran and its associated terrorist group Hezbollah for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies." On May 31, 2001, Steven Emerson and Daniel Pipes wrote in The Wall Street Journal that "Officials of the Iranian government helped arrange advanced weapons and explosives training for Al-Qaeda personnel in Lebanon where they learned, for example, how to destroy large buildings."

The 9/11 Commission Report stated that 8 to 10 of the hijackers on 9/11 passed through Iran and their travel was facilitated by Iranian border guards. The report also noted that "a senior operative of Hezbollah" (Imad Mughniyah) was on the flights that convoyed the future hijackers from Saudi Arabia to Tehran, along with associates that Kenneth Timmerman describes as "Iranian agents". The extent of Iranian involvement has been questioned due to major differences between the religious ideologies of Iran and al Qaeda; according to the 9/11 Commission report, Mughniyah's presence on flights carrying the hijackers to Iran may have been a "remarkable coincidence." After the commission called for "further investigation" into a possible Iranian role in the attacks, President George W. Bush demanded that Iran sever its ties with al-Qaeda, while saying that in his view, "There was no direct connection between Iran and the attacks of September 11.

In February 2014, the US Treasury Department stated that Iran was helping al Qaeda transfer fighters into Syria, with key smuggler Olimzhon Adkhamovich Sadikov providing "visas and passports to numerous foreign fighters."

In March 2015, a US federal judge found Iran, along with Sudan, complicit in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole by AQ, stating, "Iran was directly involved in establishing Al-Qaeda’s Yemen network and supported training and logistics for Al-Qaeda in the Gulf region", and that “Iran used Lebanese Hizballah . . . as its primary ‘facilitator’ for providing training and communications support."

Until there is regime change in Iran, militant Islamic fundamentalism will continue to increase. Iran is the source of most of it and they precipitated the current division between Sunni and Shi'a. If they get a nuclear weapon, I can assure you that the Saudis will get one as well. They are two scorpions in a bottle each bent on the destruction of the other.

The 9/11 Commission Report - the one that is hiding the Saudi involvement?

The 9/11 Commission is not hiding Saudi involvement. The USG is hiding it by redacting portions of the report.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiight.