By Mohanned

I guess one can say that it is unfortunate that the PM of Jordan was abroad after the rockets of terror landed in Aqaba Killing Subhi Alawneh, a father, a husband, a son, and a most importantly a human. His Majesty’s absence didn’t help either. However, as someone who believes that the roles of our branches of governing should be redefined and restructured to reflect his Majesty’s vision of having a full-fledged constitutional monarchy, a chance was missed. The government and its tools could have played a major role in managing the sad event in a way that might have helped in laying the foundations for the true institutionalization of the governing of the country.

While most of us would agree that the management of the crisis on the ground level was professional, I doubt that the same impression applies to the media and PR aspects. Many in our country, whether we like it or not, do actually sympathize with terrorists and their agenda. Public opinion numbers as evidenced by the multiple PEW attitude reports provide significant support that we have a major problem when it comes the Jordanian public supporting (or at least describing it as “justifiable”) terrorism. Such numbers, I believe, apply more to the heinous crimes which occur abroad and not on Jordanian soil. Either way, the 2005 hotel attacks in Amman did play a major role in deflating such numbers in Jordan, but it is still a major problem.

I am not trying to delve into an attempt to explain the worrying numbers; I am simply trying to point to the fact that our government could have done a better job in managing the event in a way that delivers a PR blow to the terrorists and their agenda. The fact the Subhi Alawneh, may god bless his soul and give his family strength, and the other victims could have been any one of us means a lot on so many levels. Why, some might ask. As a Jordanian I do have a little bit of knowledge about how some might try to justify such horrible acts. When the 2005 hotel attacks occurred, I heard many who said that the victims “shouldn’t have been in the hotels”. From those people’s religious point of view, hotels are “Amaken Fojoor”, that is, immoral places where Muslims shouldn’tbe. Such targeted attacks are somewhat justifiable to many. Reforming such beliefs won’t happen overnight, but we should take every step possible to make sure that they don’t spread further.

Fortunately, we Jordanian haven’t witnessed terror attacks that are just aimless in the sense that they kill blindly. To many, the word terrorist in the Arab and Muslim world where terrorism hasn’t hit close to home is simply foreign. In a way the word sounds imported.The picture of terrorist that many have in their minds is that of someone taking revenge from the invaders. It is of someone blowing up a military vehicle or killing some foreign soldiers. School blowers and Friday market bombers are absent from their minds. Whether they intentionally ignore such images or not is beyond what I am trying to get at. The latest rocket attack is just a prototype of such aimless attacks that reflects exactly what the terrorists truly represent. They “simply” don’t value human life, period, so they must be presented to the public as such. The government and the independent media in our country must be a part of a national effort to expose their sick ideology. We all have a role to play. We need to speak up. The message should be centered around the fact that it could have been you, your father, mother, sister, friend, son, daughter, or neighbor that was murdered. The terrorist doesn’t care.

Of course that is not to say that combating terror and religious intolerance is separable from the integrated reform agenda which we must pursue as a country but have failed to do so up to now. There is still an opportunity to gain some good from this tragedy. The people need to see strong leadership. One that is determined and transparent. One that keeps us informed.