King Faisal ibn Abdul-Aziz of Saudi Arabia

Compiled By: Syed Ali Shahbaz
On March 25, 1975 AD, King Faisal ibn Abdul-Aziz of Saudi Arabia was shot and killed at point blank range by his nephew, Faisal bin Musaid, at the age of 69 after a reign of 11 years, less than two years after he led the oil embargo against the West during the Israeli war that crippled Western economy. It is widely believed that the CIA was behind the assassination, in view of the fact that Faisal bin Musaid had recently returned from the US.
Another reason for King Faisal’s assassination was the fact that he was a broad-minded person, aware of the criminal nature of his own father, Abdul-Aziz, who with British help had occupied much of the Arabian Peninsula and named it Saudi Arabia. Faisal thus acknowledged the religious and cultural diversity of the land, including the predominantly Shi’ite Muslim oil-rich region of the east, the question of Asir in the southwest that along with the Shi’ite Ismaili regions of Najran and Jizan was seized from Yemen, and the old Hashemite Kingdom of the Hejaz, with its capital Mecca. He included non-Wahhabi, cosmopolitan Sunni Hejazis from Mecca and Jeddah in the government, and when the great Shi’ite Muslim Marja’, Grand Ayatollah Seyyed Mohsin al-Hakeem, came on Hajj pilgrimage, Faisal allowed him to hold the congregational prayers at the holy Ka’ba in the Masjid al-Haraam. The Wahhabis wanted to remove him, and after his assassination, discrimination based on sect, tribe, region and gender became the order of the day and has remained as such until today.