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Jordan is the target

Tayel Al-Damen

4 min read

What happened in the village of Hamoud in Karak requires us to view it as one of the most dangerous assaults on the meanings of security and citizenship in Jordan's modern history, and to be at the level of the event and the danger. Pursuing the killers, arresting them, trying them, and carrying out the harshest penalties against them, even if it reaches execution in accordance with the law, is not enough to restore security to children and remove sadness from the hearts of the victims' families and all Jordanians who were devastated by this painful event. Therefore, the responsibility today extends far beyond merely pursuing the killers, to include protecting society from the causes that allow them to be produced again, and from the effects they wanted to leave behind.

The crime touched innocent, secure Jordanian citizens and assaulted the sanctity of a house of worship. The killers attempted to make religious affiliation a gateway to fear within the one homeland, and this is a danger that requires a deep, comprehensive review that goes beyond statements of condemnation and denunciation, no matter how sincere and necessary they may be in moments of great pain.

The first thing that deserves review is what some of us say in good faith in their speeches and words. When we repeat in every ordeal that Christians are "part of the homeland," or invoke phrases of praise to prove their status, we place their citizenship in the position of someone who needs a certificate of recognition. Our Christian brothers are authentic Jordanians; the homeland is their homeland, its history is their history, its institutions are their institutions, their rights are established by citizenship, and their dignity is protected. We do not need a sad occasion to re-declare it.

Good citizenship requires that the Jordanian citizen feels that the state protects them because they are Jordanian, and that an assault on them affects everyone. Our discourse must shift from listing groups and exchanging certificates of tolerance to consolidating the values of citizenship and equality as a daily practice in schools, institutions, media platforms, and all details of life.

It is a mistake for the labeling of the perpetrators as "extremists" to turn into a ready-made phrase that summarizes the crime and closes the door to questioning. They are terrorist killers, and their responsibility for their actions is absolute. At the same time, we must carefully examine the discourse of takfir (excommunication), incitement to murder and hatred, and the statements that allow the sowing of the seeds of division and sedition, presenting them as something normal. Confronting the crime requires knowing the path that leads a person to take up arms against innocent people.

As we have mentioned, what happened is a major event that amounts to an aggression against Jordan. The possibility of external incitement, funding, or planning is not excluded and is not absent from the minds of the competent investigative authorities. The timing of the crime and what is happening in the occupied West Bank—a major aggression described by the occupation's prime minister as the most violent since 1967—and the danger threatening Jordan of the displacement of West Bank residents, are not separate from what happened in Karak. The event is major and transcends the thinking of the "ignorant" who were directed from afar!

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