Walid Phares has some ideas why Jordan may be the focus of a coming wave of terrorism.
- This is the clash of the Hashemite kingdom (Jordan) versus the wahhabis in Saudi Arabia. King Abdallah’s ancestors were considered the legitimate rulers of the holy places until Western Arabia was taken over by the Saudi clan. The Hashemite remnant, with the help of the British, established Transjordan. As Phares puts it :
The result: two fundamentally opposing views of Islam and the world. The Hashemites ruled as monarchs, proposed a moderate form of religious belief, and allied themselves with the West. The wahhabis have spent generations and billions tearing the world apart in Allah’s name. (ed. note: In other words, the bad guys got the oil)
- Phares says that al-Quaeda grew out of the Cold War, aligning itself against the West in the process.
While bin Laden pledged to destroy America and the infidels, King Hussein remained a faithful ally of the West and a proponent of a peaceful settlement between the Israelis and Palestinians. After his passing, his son, Abdallah, pledged to resume his father’s anti-terrorism stance. - Jordan didn’t participate in the first Iraqi war, nor did they help in the removal of Saddam Hussein. They also opened their borders to fleeing refugees, mostly Sunnis, which has attracted the anger of the Shi’ites.
- On the other hand, Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel, which certainly annoyed the jihadists.
- But here are two main reasons for the attack:
First, the Hashemite kingdom has actually managed to counter radical Islam and to negate the fundamentalist doctrines of the Wahhabis. Moderate clerics are supported by the government. They have also opposed Syria’s occupation of Lebanon.
Second — and, in my opinion, most fundamental to all of this — is Abu Massab al-Zarqawi. Terrorist extraordinaire and…a Jordanian. Phares says that Zarqawi wants to “teach the apostate monarch and his Western educated queen a lesson.”
Homecoming for Zarqawi is necessary. Opening his office in downtown Amman with the requisite bombing party, Zarqawi is elbowing more room for his terror network, crowded as it is by now in Iraq. Two years ago, Zarqawi tried to use a biochemical attack in Jordan. It failed, but it also exposed to plain view Syria’s role in aiding and abetting Zarqawi, since the plotters originated there.
But now he thinks Jordan has been softened up sufficiently to begin the real denouement. Kill off the tourist trade (so to speak), destabilize the economy, work up resentment against Jordan’s role in establishing stability in the region, start a civil war, and —poof!— there goes another Iraqi ally. And here comes Wahhabi power grab, via Jordan’s errant son, Zarqawi.
We can only hope there will be a Shakespearean fifth act with all the bad guys lying dead on the stage while the Hashemite king explains in some version of Arabic blank verse why it ended badly for the villains. Any other ending does not bode well for the West.
This may be a long and tiresome play, but it must be got through. The curtain should be rising on the second act any day now.
Hat Tip:Jihad Watch
Act II of the play is now taking place and suggests strongly that Zarqawi chose poorly French nationalism may have died from an overdose of multi-culturalism, but Jordanian nationalism appears robust and ready for a fight. And those waving the flag include Leftists and Islamists.
AMMAN, Jordan — Hundreds of angry Jordanians rallied Thursday outside one of three U.S.-based hotels attacked by homicide bombers, shouting, “Burn in hell, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi!” after the terrorist’s group claimed responsibility for the blasts that killed at least 56 people. At least one American was killed and two were wounded, the U.S. Embassy said.
The Amman protest was organized by Jordan’s 14 professional and trade unions — made up of both hard-line Islamic groups and leftist political organizations — traditional critics of King Abdullah II’s moderate, pro-Western policies.
Protesters shouted, “Death to al-Zarqawi, the villain and the traitor!” Honking vehicles were decorated with Jordanian flags and posters of the king. A helicopter hovered overhead.
“We sacrifice our lives for you, Amman!” the protesters chanted.
On its way to establish the Global Caliphate, Al-Qaeda now spends most of its time and effort killing fellow muslims and in doing so has antagonized Iraq, Egypt and now Jordan – the latter two reprenting potentially powerfull assets in the War against the Mohammedans. This also appears to me to be a growing validation of the Bush doctrine.
Whatever the reverberations from the attack in Amman, it appears that the promised Ramadan Intifada has been at least partially and blelatedly delivered in places from France to Indonesia and that the World War to restablish Islamic supremacy is entering a more frenetic phase.
Oh, thank you, stoutfellow! What wonderful news!
Made my day.
Most people read about the Crusades to try to gain an understanding of the West vs. Islam. IMHO the period to study in detail is the immediate pre and post WW I history of the Middle East. This was the time when the Euro powers were squabbling over the corpse of the Ottoman Empire.
There is a boatload of good primary and secondary writings on this very critical time and most Anglo-Euro’s have not even read a college level survey of the inter war history. It has been over forty years since I took the two semester Modern History of the Middle East sequence that my university offered and the four books that comprised the texts are dog eared, worn and full of little post-it tabs from constant reference.
Phares; and by extension, Dymphna’s gloss; just skim the thick, murky atmosphere of this time. I’m off for another period of cramming food into baby beaks; getting them prepared to climb over the edge of the nest, test their wings and finally jump off off a twig. But, I’ll try to send the Baron and D. a list of of five or six books that might help illuminate. Be warned, though, the stuff I read is usually written by historians who are not stylists and word smiths.
Dry as martini’s where you just whispered “Vermouth” over the gin. There is a bar in San Francisco that used to make them so dry that they didn’t have urinals. Just dust pans.