The Houthi targeted Makkah, then tried to wash his hands of it by claiming he had not done so, and after that began raising slogans about Makkah holding its rightful place for him and for the members of his group, and about his being incapable of targeting it with anything.
If he claimed what he claimed, and hastened to deny what he denied the moment it was announced that Saudi air defenses had intercepted and destroyed the drone he sent- then he claimed, and denied, and went on claiming and denying, for a purpose of his own.
He hastened to deny not out of any love for Makkah, as it might seem at first glance, but out of hypocrisy toward Muslims around the world. He understands that Makkah is a red line for every Muslim in every land, as is Madina- not for every Saudi alone, and not for every Arab only- and that to approach them is to approach sanctities whose violation admits no discussion and no talk.
He rushed to deny because he knows perfectly well that the targeting announced by the Saudi authorities at the time angered every Muslim across the earth, enraged him, provoked him, and made the Houthi group an adversary of Muslims the world over.
We know that the Organization of Islamic Cooperation has 58 member states, and these states, with their hundreds of millions of people, can accept anything except harm to the Islamic sanctities in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. That is what drove the Houthi to deny, and to repeat the denial, in the hope that these states, or their peoples, might forgive him what he had dared to do.
That, precisely, was what dominated his mind when he denied the targeting and went on repeating the denial, and it pointed to a narrowness of mind, a narrowness of horizon, and a poverty of thought. For the story, for every Muslim, is not the targeting of Makkah in itself, nor the targeting of Madina within its own bounds; the story is the targeting of Saudi Arabia as the land that holds these sanctities within its borders and upon its soil.
An Egyptian, for example, who decides to perform the umrah or the hajj does not say he is going to Makkah, where the umrah and the hajj are, nor even that he is going to visit Madina, where the Mosque of the Prophet, peace be upon him, stands. He says he is going to "the Prophet's land."
What does this mean? It means he does not distinguish between Saudi Arabia and the sanctities on its soil, but sees them as one thing, and widens the frame of his vision to see the noble Prophet in the whole of this country- not in Madina alone, where his honored tomb lies, nor even in Makkah alone, where the Prophet of Islam lived part of his life before the migration to Madina.
This meaning the Houthi did not wish to see as he denied and denied again. Had he seen it, he would have realized that Muslims throughout the earth do not separate Saudi Arabia from the sanctities on its soil, and that they see the country and the sanctities as a single entity whose components cannot be separated.
The Houthi denied targeting Makkah or Madina, and affirmed that he had not targeted them in particular, as though targeting them were forbidden while targeting Riyadh, or Jazan, or Taif, or Najran, or any other of the Kingdom's cities were permitted.
Had he wished, he would have seen that the ordinary Muslim makes no distinction between something in the south of the Kingdom and something in its north. All of it, in his eyes, is exactly what it is in the eyes of every Egyptian: "the Prophet's land."
It is no secret that "the Prophet's land" has never taken a position against the Houthi simply because he is a Houthi, but because he has bullied and still bullies Yemen, has bullied and still bullies the people of Yemen, and has bullied and still bullies the political forces and components in Yemen. The truth is that he is one component like the others he has bullied and still bullies, and that Yemen's affairs can stand up only if every component obtains a space in political life equal to its relative size in its society- no less, and certainly no more.
The Houthi group's relative size in Yemeni society does not justify its entering the capital, nor license it to stand against the country's legitimate government, nor to bar that government from being present in Sanaa, the capital. The group's relative size neither justifies nor licenses any of this. And if it has entered the capital and settled there, that does not mean it is the government, however long it stays and however long its stay may last.
The targeting of the Kingdom can be seen from more than one angle, and it has more than one dimension. But I look at it here from the angle from which ordinary Muslims view it. What concerns these ordinary Muslims in the matter is only the affairs of their religion, and the affairs of their religion are not complete without visiting the Kingdom- where Makkah is, where Madina is, and, in sum, where the land of the master of mankind is. That is what the Houthi neither grasps nor comprehends.
