Mecca is Islam’s holiest city, and the destination of an annual pilgrimage known as the Hajj. It is forbidden for non-Muslims to visit the city, and this rule is strictly enforced by the Saudi government and police.
I find this story a little hard to believe, at least without more details. Most people aren’t so fickle about their religious beliefs that they would convert to Islam on short notice just for the sake of putting down a riot. So what’s the straight dope here? Did the French commandos really convert? Were they ordered to by their commanding officer? Or did the French military just claim that the soldiers had converted—possibly with the complicity of the Saudi government—to avoid public outcry from Muslims who would not have wanted their holy site to be defiled?
The links in the Wikipedia article provide no cites or confirmation.
Perhaps some newspaper archives would provide more information.
Public library files may be of some help.
Seems a bit far fetched!
It’s easy to find accounts of this raid through Google. What’s hard to find is accounts of those commandos converting to Islam before performing their raid.
I remember hearing about the incident, but I didn’t recall any French involvement; I thought it was Saudi commandos.
This site says it was a combination of Saudi and French.
This page mentions three French advisors to the Saudi commandos.
I couldn’t find a lot of other details on the nationality of the soldiers involved. It would appear from the second page that the number of foriegners was small.
Exactly what is involved in converting to Islam? If it is just the public statement of acceptance of Allah and Mohammed as Prophet, then couldn’t the necessary words be said, and then ignored once the commandos returned home? Or they could get re-baptised or the like? Or is that just too simplistic an answer?
Doesn’t this assume that there were no Islamic members of the French armed forces available at the time? In the 70’s, there were plenty of immigrants from the former colonies in France to supply a recruiting pool. And when France gave up her empire, did any of the colonial troops move into the Metropolitan armed forces as the Ghurkas did when the British left India? And even though the Foreign Legion still had a pro-Nazi philosophy in the 70’s, did they bar enlistment to Black and Arab men who were Moslem?
Yes, all that’s required for conversion to Islam is to repeatedly recite words to the effect of, “There is no god but God and Mohammed is his prophet.” That’s why I figured that maybe the conversions were not genuine… perhaps the French commandos just “said the magic words” to please the locals but had no intention of actually converting to Islam.
Not repeatedly; once will do. If you mean it. If you don’t mean it, it doesn’t count.
I suspect the “conversion” was just a story the Saudis put out to mollify their citizens. I mean, seriously, they had an armed rebel force occupying the Ka‘bah—they were going to do whatever the fuck it took to beat them, Islam, schmislam. I was told about the French commands by an Egyptian I met 10 years ago, and I wondered if it were just a rumor to discredit the Saudis, or real. Seemed likely to be real. This is the only other time I’ve heard it mentioned. The Egyptian’s comment to me was, “They used the British Special Forces and the French Foreign Legion—but they should have used the Green Berets.” I guess the British part was one of those embellishments that gets added to rumors in the retelling. Here was a Muslim who had no problem with non-Muslims rescuing the Ka‘bah. He also told me that King Fahd rewarded his favorite non-Muslim foreigners by bringing them to visit Mecca. A unique treat indeed.
In his quite excellent and accessable work Islam in the World, Malise Ruthven makes reference to the incident and never mentios that it might not have been true. He strikes me as a highly respected/repectable source for Islamic history and if he put it in his book without question that has a lot of weight of credibility as far as I’m concerned.