Karak has a long memory of extremism and terrorism. Pilot Muath al-Kasasbeh, burned alive by ISIS, came from there. So did the gang that barricaded itself in Karak Castle in 2016 and killed ten people, seven of them members of the security forces.
A dispute has recently broken out between the Syrian and Jordanian authorities, apparently prompted by Jordanian suspicion that the cell from the village of al-Jadida in Karak was influenced by ISIS networks in Syria. Such influence is possible. But it should not distract us from a larger truth: violent extremism has been a phenomenon in many of our societies for decades. We can no longer console ourselves, when tragedy strikes in any of our countries, that it was imported from somewhere else or engineered by foreign powers against our lands and peoples.
The root of the disease in the Karak cell lies in ideas that were planted and hardened into beliefs, carrying with them hatred of anyone different in religion, nationality, culture, or outlook. This "culture" is relatively new, a few decades old, and it grew out of fear for identity in the face of the Western stranger. It has passed through several stages: first a call for reform; then a drive for progress, to overcome decline as the West defined it; then partisan organization to preserve or recover identity; and then a revolutionary identity bent on wrecking the world. In recent years, we have entered a stage of contraction, isolation, and despair, shot through with violence.
There is no need to detail the ideas and mechanisms of each stage. But in the revolutionary stage, as is well known, the violent organizations faced a global campaign in which the Arab countries took part. It dealt them enormous blows, scattering their ranks and breaking their terrorist claim to speak for religion. The hardliners therefore had to change their methods without changing themselves. The teachers and guides carried on, but mass organizational mobilization was no longer always possible, so they went underground as individuals and small groups.
This phase of concealment, tense and vengeful, changed not only their methods but their targets. Over the past decades, their targeting has taken four forms. The first, global targeting, is no longer possible because of the blows they suffered and the precautions taken against them. The second is flight and relocation, moving to and riding on the back of other organizations in West Africa and elsewhere. The third is widening the alliance with the Houthis in Yemen and, in East Africa, with the Somali al-Shabaab movement. The fourth is isolated cells that act without direct orders and against nearby targets, such as the authorities and Christians.
As the forms of targeting changed, so did the targets. Recall that in 1998 Osama bin Laden announced a front to confront the Christians and the Jews. In his traditional vocabulary, he meant the global arena, which he went on to strike in America and Europe, and in the bombing of two embassies in East Africa. Since then, the horizons have shrunk. Targets are now chosen by capability rather than by strategic aim, and in their retreat the extremists have returned to their nearest origins: the organs of the state, and those who differ within our own societies.
Extremism is an intractable disease, the product of long exposure to hardline teaching and indoctrination, and to images of the religion's enemies near and far.
Some active on social media want to link the Karak attack to the wars on Gaza and Palestine, citing anger and exhaustion. Nothing could be further from the truth. Neither al-Qaeda, nor ISIS, nor the other hardliners have had anything to do with Palestine, nor have they carried out, or tried to carry out, a single suicide operation in the occupied territories since their terrorism began at home in the 1970s.
We should not go on believing that this is a passing phenomenon that will end on its own. It is a disease that entered Islam through hardline teaching in one environment after another. That indoctrination continues, and the fight against it must continue too. It can be described as a weakness of immunity, something neither known nor familiar in our texts or in our historical or modern lives. Weak immunity means that religion can be used, exploited, and manipulated.
All of this is visible in our societies in different forms and finds supporters, even if most incline toward withdrawal, toward retreat into family life and turning upon it, and toward violence against the nearby other or the authorities. These are sick, vengeful psyches turning on those they believe have left the faith, even when they are their own brothers, wives, or children.
Before all this and after it, what do we actually say to our Christian fellow citizens on whom this deep wound has fallen? And what do we say to our young people when they throw at us Trump's talk of destructive migrants, or Rumsfeld's words a quarter of a century ago about Islam being hijacked by extremists, and about good Americans wanting to help us "moderates" take our religion back?
