Jordan in Shock: our Ethical Responsibility

The traditional tranquility of the Jordanian capital Amman was exploited today as a gunman opened fire on a group of foriegn tourists in the touristic jewel of Amman...the Amphitheatre. The results of this horrific crime was the killing of a British tourist and injuries to others who hold British, Australian, New Zealand and Dutch citizenships.

This is a truely shocking event for all of us in Jordan. Not only that a lunatic from our community has killed and injured a group of our guests in a country that was and should always be known for hospitality, the method of the terrorism act was very problematic.

This is an event in which one person committed a crime by using a gun to target foreign tourists and this is an issue that is very difficult to be prevented by security measures. It is a common sense conclusion that the crime was first committed in the mind of that man before it was practised on the ground.

Our efforts in fighting terrorism should not focus on the security component alone, albeit its importance but also on cultural and religious components. It is not acceptable at all to justify or even 'explain" this crime in a way that entails legitimate political claims.

There are three phases for any terrorist act. The first one is instigating and supporting terrorism by manipulating religious texts and political convictions. The second phase is committing the criminal act itself and then comes the third stage of justifying and explaining it. Security efforts can hit on the second phase only but it will need enlightened cultural and religious efforts to stop instigating and justifying terrorism and this is not a responsibility of the governemnt but it is the community's responsibility.

If there is any thing positive that can be distilled out of today's event it will be the fact that the citizens themselves helped in capturing the criminal and providing support to the victims and transferred them to hospitals long before the security forces arrived. This is an indicator of the society's refusal of such barbaric acts.

I do not want to talk about the potential losses from tourism because this is not ethical. Our main point is that Jordan should remain to be a hospitable, safe and friendly place for all our foreign friends whether they are tourists, businessmen, resaerchers, students, or professionals of any career.

If we want to keep Jordan safe we should rise to the challenge of stopping terrorism at the very begenning and I mean the violent and distorted ideas that are formed in the misguided conscious of people themselves. There is no justification at all for targetinmg innocent people and that simple value should be promoted with that specific simplicity without any political "taste" that can make the justification argumnet appealing.

We are very sorry and very shocked for the loss of any innocent human life and we are outraged by any targeting of innocents and civilians whether in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq or Amman. The crime is a crime and the criminal is the same whether it was a man shouting "God is great" or it was a politicians ordering the bombardment of civilian neighborhood.

We Arabs should stop this double standard of raging against the crimes committed against us and justifying those committed by us. Otherwise, we will lose all ethical credibility, or did we already?