"In early July 2014, while doing some research for an article, he had unearthed an old copy of an Egyptian magazine, Al Lata’if al-Musawwara, which had published the report of the Indian delegation returning from the Arabian Peninsula in 1926, the one that had demanded that the Al-Sauds hand over control of the two holy cities, after the warriors of Abdulaziz had conquered the Hejaz province. There were black-and-white pictures from Mecca and Medina, of wrecked shrines and cratered walls, of ancient sites in a heap of rubble at the Jannat al-Baqi cemetery—all this destruction the calling card of ibn Abdelwahhab’s descendants and the foundation on which the Saudi kingdom was built. Back then, the Ottoman Empire was crumbling, borders were disappearing, and the British were looking for a strong man to control these desert lands. According to Naji, it was just like now, in 2014, in Iraq but also Syria, where the popular revolution had splintered beyond recognition and any common vision for a democratic, pluralistic future had been bombed into deep retreat. A new mutation of an old demon was making headlines as hordes of men in black, waving black flags, erased modern borders and conquered land, not on horses or camels as in 1926, but in pickup trucks and armored personnel carriers. They leveled shrines, smashed statues, and blew up Shia mosques. They were not establishing a kingdom but reverting to the times of the prophet and claiming they were establishing a caliphate. The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria was born, with Raqqa in Syria as its capital. The group would often be referred to by its Arabic acronym, Daesh, and Ahmed’s article about the founding of Saudi Arabia was headlined THE DAESH OF 1926. He was one of the first to draw the parallel between Saudi Wahhabism and Daesh, better known in the West as ISIS. Ahmed’s travel ban would last longer than Daesh’s hold on territory, and though there were many differences between the kingdom and the caliphate, the parallels would be drawn by many, and they would stick, much to the frustration of Saudi Arabia."