[9] Many of Juhayman's relatives participated in the Battle of Sabilla during the Ikhwan uprising against King Abdulaziz, including his father and grandfather, Sultan bin Bajad al-Otaybi.

[19] Abd al-Aziz ibn Baz[20] used his religious stature to arrange fundraising for the group, and Otaybi earned money by buying, repairing and re-selling cars from city auctions.

[21][22] Otaybi lived in a "makeshift compound" about a half hour's walk to the Prophet's Mosque, and his followers stayed in a nearby dirt-floored hostel called Bayt al-Ikhwan ("House of the Brothers").

Otaybi attacked the elder sheikhs as government sellouts and called his new group Ikhwan—the name of a Wahhabi religious militia who first fought for the House of Saud in the 1920s against the Hashemites and then revolted against them in 1929.

[13] His doctrines are said to have included:[30] As his militants seized the Grand Mosque of Mecca and took hostages, Juhayman publicly denounced the House of Saud as corrupt and illegitimate, accusing the country's royals of pursuing alliances with "Christian infidels" and importing secularism into Saudi society.

[32] Consisting of 300 to 600 well-organized militants under Juhayman's leadership, the Ikhwan took hostages from among the worshippers at the Grand Mosque and fought against the Saudi military's attempts to retake it, leading to approximately 800 casualties in total.

After French operatives provided them with a special type of tear gas that dulls aggression and obstructs breathing, Saudi troops gassed the interior of the Grand Mosque and successfully forced entry.