The King has directed the government to review policies for combating extremist ideology and to intensify efforts to dry up its sources. This is a directive that reminds us that the confrontation is long-term, and that everyone is a partner in it.
Here comes our role as youth; we are the first to be reached by incitement speech, and the first who can expose its falsehood. But the confrontation is not through slogans or statements of condemnation alone, but through a deep cultural construction that we begin with ourselves before we demand it of others.
To read, to expand in reading, and not to be satisfied with one voice, one book, or one platform. And to defend reading as a training in seeing the human being far from narrow classifications, resisting ready-made ideas, and possessing the courage to ask questions.
We must foster in ourselves and in our children a culture of reading and learning, and read history to understand how this land has lived, for centuries, with its diversity of religions and sects, and read literature to see the human being behind their identity. For whoever has read Mahmoud Darwish, Ghassan Kanafani, Abdul Rahman Munif, and Arar, and whoever has sat with Al-Jahiz, Ibn Khaldun, Taha Hussein, and Naguib Mahfouz, has learned that the truth is broader than any sentence delivered in a definitive tone, and that the human being cannot be reduced to their religion or sect.
I recall here the stabbing incident of Naguib Mahfouz in 1994 by a young man influenced by extremist ideology, in an attempt to assassinate him. In the context of talking about the incident, the issue of the assailant's ignorance of Mahfouz's literary works was raised. There is also a story told of Mahfouz's insistence, while receiving treatment in the hospital, on gifting the assailant some of his books, as an indication of his belief in the role of culture in confronting extremism. A phrase is attributed to him to the effect that society will only be reformed through culture, although this narrative and the phrase attributed to him require documentation before being adopted in their literal form.
For extensive reading produces a mind that asks: Who said this? Why now? And for whose benefit? These questions alone are enough to weaken hate speech before it settles in the heart. The extremist fears the reader who compares, verifies, and takes their time, and feels comfortable with those who receive ready-made ideas without thinking.
The bullets in Hamoud wounded us, but the deepest response to violence is for an educated generation to grow up in this nation, one that reads a lot, asks with courage, and loves with awareness; a generation that finds no place for extremism to reside in the souls of its children.
May God have mercy on the martyrs of Karak, heal its wounded, and protect Jordan as a home that accommodates all its children.
