I heard today that ISIS has vowed to "Destroy Mecca’s Kaaba, 'Kill Those Who Worship Stones.'" A friendly redditor suggested that:
"The idea of wanting to destroy the Kaaba has a long and interesting precedent. Throughout history, Arabs who have traditionally hated Muhammad have expressed their desire of doing so, probably out of spite of what Muhammad represents. Yazid bin Muawiya of the opposing clan of the Ummayads, who massacred Muhammad's family including Muhammad's grandson Hussein at Karbala, also attacked the Kaaba with catapults. Previously, Muhammad's grandfather Abdul Muttalib organized the defense of the Kaaba against another attacker named Abraha. In the current incarnation, ISIS represents Wahabi'ism, a cult that wishes to erase Muhammad's heritage and establish the supremacy of the rival, non-Hashemite clans descended from Ummaya and Abd Shams(translated as slave of the Sun). Wahabis have already destroyed many heritage buildings belonging to Muhammad and his family and friends in Saudi Arabia, under the same guise. So why the enmity stretching over centuries? At its core was the ideology of Muhammad. Muhammad belonged to the poor, the downtrodden, the disenfranchised. The opposing clans represented elitism, money, power and Arab imperialism. It was the selfless vs the selfish. They tried to persuade, bribe, cajole, armtwist him to their side. He refused. They massacred most of his family. The survivors refused to budge, citing egalitarianism and condemning the trappings of concentrated power and wealth. And so it continues to this day."
How accurate is this assessment? It seems biased, but I know very little about the subject.
Your friendly redditor has engaged in a nice bit of "let's make stuff up and hope people don't actually question what I'm saying."
He seems to think that the Kaaba was somehow seen as a symbol of Muhammad by the Arabs of his time. The Kaaba predated Muhammad by centuries and pagan Arabs in the area would have revered it just as much as Muslims did. Furthermore, the actual physical building of the Kaaba is a product of each time. Other than one stone, the building is rebuilt periodically. The location is what is sacred in Islam, not the structure.
Moving forward, I have no idea what he means by "Arabs who have traditionally hated Muhammad have expressed their desire of doing so, probably out of spite of what Muhammad represents." What Arabs? What are the sources that state this? There have been some groups (e.g. Qarmatians) that have wreaked havoc in Makkah but they, in their own twisted logic, would have argued that they were doing it out of love for Islam/Muhammad/God.
Now, on Yazid ibn Muawiyah. The poster is mixing up people. Yazid ibn Muawiyah was the caliph at the time.....in Damascus. The man who "attacked the Ka'ba" was Hajjaj ibn Yusuf (quite an infamous character in Islamic history). Furthermore, it's quite deceptive to describe him as "attacking the Ka'ba." The background is that a man named Abdullah ibn Zubair (grandson of the first caliph, Abu Bakr) had also laid claim to the caliphate and was supported by the people in Makkah and the surrounding areas. Hajjaj ibn Yusuf (a general, under Yazid ibn Muawiyah) was attacking him, not the Ka'ba. In the battle, yes, the Ka'ba was destroyed. However, to suggest that this was purposeful is ludicrous. In fact, when the Ka'ba was accidentally destroyed by the catapults, people in Hajjaj's army began defecting, sure that this was a sign that they were on the wrong side. Hajjaj (ever the shrewd politician) convinced his soldiers that they hadn't destroyed the Ka'ba, Abdullah ibn Zubair had. After all, if he had surrendered without a fight, they wouldn't have been forced to use the catapults, right? So really, this was his fault. The point I'm making is that yes, the Ka'ba was destroyed, but it was far from purposeful, let alone part of a expression of hatred towards an ideology.
Next line, wow, even more pseudohistory. I've heard some pretty strange descriptions of Wahabism, but to say that they wish to erase Muhammad's heritage and establish the supremacy of the Banu Umayyah is the equivalent of someone saying the Republican party wishes to establish the supremacy of the descendants of Robert E. Lee and erase all aspects of George Washington's heritage. Literally, that's the comparison of how his statement sounds. Wahhabism is, in a very short nutshell, a puritanical (for lack of a better word) movement that attempts to bring Islamic theology and law back to its foundations by relying solely on the first three generations of Islam and removing Islam of any characteristics it has picked up in its 1400 years that was not present at its founding. Their destruction of these heritage buildings is mainly two reasons, one theological the other practical. Theologically, a lot of these buildings were taken as shrines or holy places. However, the earliest Muslims did not consider these locations to be holy so in the eyes of the Wahhabi movement, these are innovations which should be removed to return Islam to its original state. The other, practical reason, is that the buildings needed to be demolished to make room for the new construction.
Finally, the idea that there has been a long class struggle between "Muhammad and his followers" and the rich/elite does not hold up to historical scrutiny. Yes, even a lot of Muslims will claim that the vast majority of early Muslims were poor and downtrodden and that the rich and powerful opposed Islam but this really isn't true. If you actually do an analysis of the earliest converts and group them by their clan affiliation, you'll see that they span all economic and social groups. Yes, you have Bilal and Abdullah ibn Masud who were slaves and clients (poor people without a strong tribal affiliation). But then there are plenty of early Muslims from the strong and rich classes like AbdulRahman ibn Awf and Al-Arqam ibn abi al-Arqam. Heck, out of the first four caliphs, all were from elite tribes. The first three were merchants and relatively wealthy (the third exceptionally so).
TL;DR: Friendly redditor has spun a nice fictional yarn
Forgive me if this is against the rules, but I just want to point out that the source reporting that ISIS plans to destroy the Kaaba is pretty sketchy.
I will be extremely surprised if the quote is genuine, as talking about destroying the Kaaba is a really bad way to get support from Muslims.
It's exceptionally biased. Yazid did not "massacre Muhammad's family." He was himself, with all the other Umayyads related to the prophet, although Hussein was more closely related. This is occurring in the context of the Second Fitna, a succession struggle to the Caliphate in which the Ummayads were not an "opposing clan," they were themselves the Caliphs.
The whole part at the end about selfish clans and Arab imperialism probably first comes out of Abbasid propaganda from the end of the 8th century and later. There's no real contemporary evidence for it, but it has become a standard part of both Sunni and Shia polemics. Why both? The Sunni view the Umayyads as having ended the Rashidun caliphate and gone away from the Sunna. The Shia view them as having killed Hussein and others members of the house of the prophet. It would take a long explanation but that's basically wrong on both counts. The sunna as we know it today didn't exist, and the House of Ali/the Prophet that the Shia focus on would not have been a very clear lineage for another century or so
None of this stuff going on in the first couple centuries has anything to do, at root, with Wahabism, which is an early modern movement arising out of the alliance between Abd Al Wahab and the Al Saud. They aren't a cult, but they have been regarded as religious fanatics for much of their history, such as when they forcibly put down by Muhammad Ali Pasha in the 19th century. The Wahabis do, however, generally disdain artifacts generally, and can be called basically iconoclastic, but they aren't a cult, they're the official religious ideology of Saudi Arabia. As far as I know the Saudis have never sought to destroy the Kaaba. I would also hesitate to characterize the ideology of Isis as Wahabist (this is getting into 20 year territory rule) as while Saudi Arabia has their fingers in a lot of international jihad pies, Saudi State Wahabism is not the ideology of any terrorist group I'm familiar with, and they generally hate the Al Saud for cooperating with America.
edit: I was looking for a reference for what the guy was referring to when he said that Yazid attacked the Kaba with catapults, as I've never heard of such a thing. A quick look in the encyclopedia of Islam refers to Yazid attacking Mecca with catapults but it wasn't to destroy the Kaba it was because Mecca was the capital of Ibn Zubayr, who was holed up in the city, and had established himself as counter Caliph (considering the land he held, Ibn Zubayr, in effect, was the Caliph.) Yazid died before he could attack, the siege was eventually accomplished years after his death by Abd Al Malik. So the idea that Yazid did such a thing has no basis whatsoever as far as I can find-- he didn't even control the city.