Karak: Testing Citizenship and Societal Resilience in the Face of Extremism

• The investigation must not be pre-empted, and the actors’ backgrounds must not be assumed; however, incomplete evidence does not rule out analysing conditions that may make societies more vulnerable to extremism.
• The threat can be understood through two complementary lenses: analysis of conflict and regional shifts, and analysis of the political, social, and economic actors and pathways that move ideas from rhetoric to violence.
• The article argues that the region is experiencing a new wave of extremism, or a reconfiguration of earlier waves, without assuming a single organization or a proven causal link among all incidents.
• The article identifies four drivers: regional violence and violations; economic and social pressures; stalled democratic transition and the weak perceived efficacy of participation; and regional polarization and exclusionary ideological projects.
• Grievance, unemployment, and political frustration do not inevitably cause terrorism, but extremist groups may exploit them and recast them as closed narratives that justify violence.
• Citizenship is not merely a legal slogan; it is a social and cultural safeguard based on shared rights and responsibilities and the acceptance of difference.
• Jordan’s message on Christian pilgrimage and protecting the Christian presence in the Levant has its full meaning when reflected in everyday practice and equal rights within society.
• Countering extremism requires combining security and the rule of law with cultural, educational, media, economic, and political prevention.
• Prevention programmes should be assessed by actual changes in attitudes, behaviour, and the ability to resist incitement, not merely by the number of activities and seminars.
• The central conclusion is to move from securing an incident to building societal resilience, translating Jordan’s message of pluralism and coexistence into internal capacity that can be measured and renewed.

The painful incident in Karak has left an impact that goes beyond shock, grief, and anger. Events that affect a community’s security and touch places of worship, condolence gatherings, and the human bonds that bring people together confront us with questions deeper than the details of the incident itself: questions about the kind of society we want, the meaning of the citizenship in which we take refuge, and our ability to protect the public sphere from ideas that turn difference into enmity, belonging into a tool of exclusion, and religion from a system of values into a justification for violence.

It is not wise, at moments such as these, to pre-empt the investigation or assume the ideological or organizational identity of those who carried out the act. Justice requires waiting for the evidence, and the rule of law must not replace investigation with speculation. Yet the fact that evidence concerning backgrounds and motives is incomplete does not eliminate the need for public discussion of the regional, social, and cultural environment in which extremism grows, nor does it relieve us of the responsibility to scrutinize our prevention policies. There is a fundamental difference between claiming to know the motives of actors whose backgrounds have not been established and studying the factors that may make societies more vulnerable to hatred and extremism.

From this perspective, what happened in Karak can be examined through two complementary lenses: the lens of conflict, which follows political and ideological shifts in the region, and the lens of scene analysis, which examines political, social, and economic actors and the pathways through which extremist ideas move from rhetoric to mobilization, and from mobilization to violent conduct. This reading does not seek to justify the crime, but to understand why preventing its recurrence is a responsibility that extends beyond the security services, without diminishing their decisive role.

A New Wave of Extremism or the Reproduction of Previous Waves?

I tend to believe that the region is facing a new wave of extremism, or at least a reconfiguration of previous waves within a more complex environment. I do not mean that a single organization stands behind the various incidents, or that a proven causal chain connects every incident to another. Rather, I mean that regional conditions, social grievances, ideological rhetoric, and digital spaces overlap in ways that can create a shared environment for extremism, even when organizations, actors, and objectives differ. Yet the idea is the same: turning the absence of justice in one place into a justification for fear everywhere.

Jordan is no stranger to this context. The Kingdom witnessed the events involving the Irbid cell and the attacks at Karak Castle in 2016, followed by the Fuheis bombing and the security operation against the cell in Salt, in the Naqab al-Dabour area, in 2018. This historical sequence demonstrates that the extremist threat predates the current waves of regional escalation, but it does not prove that these events belonged to a single network or had identical motives. The one idea behind them, meanwhile, is the exploitation of uncertainty and its transformation into a profound sense of fear.

The question raised by these experiences concerns not only the state’s ability to detect cells and thwart their plans, but also our ability to understand how extremist ideas are reproduced, and how individuals who live within their own communities and interact with their institutions and everyday relationships can become susceptible to adopting notions that dehumanize others and confer false legitimacy on violence.

The success of the security services in containing a threat, however important, does not necessarily mean that the conditions allowing a new threat to emerge have ended. Security addresses danger once it becomes detectable and actionable, while intellectual and social prevention works to reduce the likelihood of that danger taking shape in the first place. Between these two levels lies a broad field of cultural, educational, political, and economic work that must not be left outside the strategy for combating extremism.

Four Drivers That Increase Susceptibility to Extremism

The first driver is the regional scene of violence and the grave violations accompanying it, particularly the widespread killing of civilians, destruction, and human suffering witnessed in Gaza, and the commission of war crimes and genocide associated with the war, in addition to feelings of impunity and double standards in the international system.

This does not mean that these realities produce extremism automatically, or that anger at injustice necessarily leads to violence. The overwhelming majority of people are able to distinguish between resisting injustice and targeting innocent people, and between defending rights and justifying attacks on others. Extremist groups, however, seek to exploit genuine grievances, reduce them to closed narratives, and then present violence as a duty, an act of revenge, or a restoration of dignity. The danger lies not in anger itself, but in forces that seek to monopolize it and direct it toward targeting those who are different, while eliminating the possibilities of political, legal, and ethical solutions.

The second driver is economic and social as much as it is psychological and political. Unemployment, a lack of prospects, deprivation, limited opportunities for social mobility, and a sense of injustice can accumulate and produce frustration and a loss of trust in institutions. In Jordan, the United Nations report on results for 2024 showed that the unemployment rate reached 21.4%, while unemployment among those aged 20–24 reached 40.5%, according to 2023 data cited by the United Nations.

These figures do not mean that unemployment explains terrorism, or that unemployed young people are inherently more inclined toward extremism; such a conclusion would be inaccurate and unfair. The figures do, however, reveal the scale of the challenge concerning opportunities for life, participation, and economic independence. When a person feels unable to influence their own future, and that their efforts do not open a path to achievement, they may become more susceptible to rhetoric that promises them a certain identity, an alternative status, or a false form of heroism. The economic issue then becomes a question of dignity, justice, and belonging—matters that the security approach cannot address on its own.

The third driver is the failure, slowness, or at least delay of democratic transition, along with declining confidence in the ability of public participation to bring about tangible change. What came to be known as the “Arab Spring,” from 2010 to 2019, carried major promises. Yet the failure of many experiences, the wars that erupted in several countries, and the retreat or stagnation of reform pathways produced disappointments and environments of political frustration.

In Jordan, participation data for the 2024 parliamentary elections indicate that turnout was around 32% of eligible voters, while participation among those under 35 reached 31.18%. These figures alone do not measure political trust, but they remind us that expanding participation and turning it into tangible influence remain important challenges, raising questions of representation, democracy, and efficacy.

Citizenship is not strengthened merely by calling on people to obey the law, however necessary that may be. It takes root when citizens feel that they are partners in setting public priorities, that institutions respond to their demands, and that political differences do not place them outside the national community. When channels of participation close or appear ineffective, some extremist narratives seek to present themselves as an alternative to politics, replacing pluralism with a claim to possess absolute truth.

The fourth driver is regional polarization between projects of expansion and domination pursued by the extremist Israeli right, and networks of violence and ideological and sectarian mobilization linked to regional powers, including armed groups that employ the rhetoric of political Islam and rely on support from states and entities in the region, as well as the instrumentalization of these groups. This does not mean that these projects are equivalent in nature or impact, or that they are the direct cause of every incident in the region. Rather, the point is that the rise of exclusionary rhetoric, the normalization of force at the expense of law, and the politicization of religious identities all expand polarization and weaken the common ground between societies.

When religion, sect, or nationality becomes a tool for classifying people as friends or enemies, and a person is reduced to their identity, targeting them becomes easier in the extremist imagination. When these narratives feed on protracted regional conflicts, they cross the borders of the countries in which they originated and find their way into the public sphere through the media, digital platforms, and networks of propaganda and incitement.

These four drivers do not operate separately. Injustice may turn into a political grievance; the grievance may become a closed identity-based narrative; and extremist groups may then give it an interpretation that justifies violence. This is not an inevitable chain, however. These are possible pathways that institutions and societies can interrupt if they possess the tools of prevention, justice, and participation.

Citizenship Is Not a Slogan in the Face of Extremism

Here we reach the core of the Jordanian question. Extremism threatens not only people’s lives and security; it also threatens the idea on which the national community is built: that citizens, regardless of religion, origin, or opinion, are partners in the country and in its rights and responsibilities.

From this perspective, Jordan’s relationship with religious diversity is neither a cultural or tourism detail nor merely a message addressed to the outside world. It is part of Jordan’s self-definition, its historical and social identity, and the meaning that citizenship gives to every individual within it.

Jordan has demonstrated this through its care for Christian religious sites, its role as a destination for Christian pilgrimage, and its defense of the Christian presence in the Levant, alongside its positions in support of protecting holy sites and religious coexistence. In 2026, King Abdullah II inaugurated the Al-Maghtas International Orthodox University and directed the government to support an initiative marking the two-thousandth anniversary of the baptism of Jesus Christ in 2030. The Ministry of Tourism also announced the documentation of 34 Christian pilgrimage sites in the Kingdom, and last September the King explicitly referred to the Jordanian model for safeguarding the Christians of the Levant before the United Nations General Assembly.

The significance of these positions lies in their affirmation that the Christian presence in Jordan is not an intrusion into its history, and that protecting diversity is not a concession a majority makes to a minority. It is, rather, an expression of a national identity that has been shaped throughout history by the plurality of its components, interests, and experiences.

Yet the message Jordan sends to the world is not complete through protecting religious sites, celebrating Christian pilgrimage, or affirming a discourse of moderation in international forums. It becomes complete when every citizen feels that these values are translated into daily practice, that their dignity and rights are protected, and that their national belonging is not subjected to a religious, sectarian, or political test.

Citizenship is not merely the legal opposite of extremism; it is also its social and cultural opposite. It is the idea that prevents any group from monopolizing the homeland and establishes acceptance of difference as a natural reality within society, rather than a threat to be eliminated.

For this reason, confronting extremism should become neither a purely security-focused discussion nor a moral discourse content to call for tolerance. Citizenship must become a tangible practice in education, the media, public policy, political and economic work, and the state’s three modernization tracks—political, economic, and administrative. Individuals must feel that national belonging gives them dignity, opportunities, and participation, rather than leaving them to seek alternative meaning in closed identities or groups that exploit their anger.

Culture as the Line of Defence That Precedes the Crime

From the perspective of a research center such as the Politics and Society Institute, which plays a role in analyzing the structural foundations of extremism, discussion can begin with the recognition that extremism is not merely a set of ideas found in books or on platforms. It is a phenomenon that grows where ideological rhetoric meets social, psychological, and political conditions that allow it to have an impact. Understanding it therefore requires engaging with the environment that receives and reproduces ideas, rather than merely pursuing expressions that appear at the end of the process.

Emphasizing the cultural and awareness-building dimension does not mean minimizing the priority of security or replacing law with dialogue. It means moving from dealing only with a threat after it has taken shape to investing in preventing it from taking shape. The state needs capable security services, an independent and effective judiciary, and laws applied to everyone. It also needs schools, universities, and media, cultural, and political institutions capable of building intellectual resilience, developing critical-thinking skills, and confronting disinformation and hate speech.

It also needs economic and social policies that reduce exclusion and expand opportunities for participation, as well as a public sphere in which young people can express their anger and views and disagree with one another without resorting to erasure or violence. It must also assess the ability of counter-extremism programmes to measure their actual impact. The number of activities, seminars, and campaigns is not sufficient evidence of successful prevention unless we know what has changed in people’s attitudes and behaviour, and in their ability to resist incitement.

The real test of national discourse is not whether everyone agrees on everything, but whether people can disagree without their differences turning into an existential conflict. Success does not mean preventing people from expressing anger, but preventing extremist forces from turning it into hatred directed at a group in society. The goal is not to create citizens who are all alike, but citizens who understand that their differences do not diminish their rights, belonging, or humanity.

We must not confuse criticism of public policies with extremism, political dissent with incitement, or anger at injustice with justification for attacking innocent people. Confusing these concepts excessively does not strengthen resilience; rather, it is a recipe that may weaken trust in institutions and fuel the sense of exclusion that extremist groups exploit.

From the Shock of Karak to the Question of the Future

What happened in Karak cannot be separated from the concern generated by regional transformations, but neither should the incident be reduced to a ready-made theory or the assumption that general drivers of extremism automatically explain the motives of everyone who commits violence. Determining those motives is the work of the investigation. The role of political and social analysis is to test its questions, monitor indicators, distinguish facts from hypotheses, and prepare to confront risks before they become new incidents.

If previous events have demonstrated the ability of Jordanian security services to deal with serious threats, today’s national responsibility requires broadening the definition of success in countering extremism. Success is not only thwarting plots; it necessarily includes reducing the environments that allow them to grow. Nor is it only protecting society from violence that has already occurred, but also protecting its capacity for cohesion, trust, and participation.

The incident in Karak is a reminder that society’s safety does not rest solely on the strength of its security institutions or on moderation as a political discourse. It depends on a reciprocal relationship between a state that protects its citizens, fair and effective institutions, a society that refuses to turn difference into enmity, and citizenship that is indivisible.

We may not know today everything that needs to be known about the actors’ backgrounds, and we must not pre-empt the investigation. But we do know that the region is experiencing intense polarization, that hate speech can exploit fear, injustice, and frustration, and that addressing this reality requires more than a security response, however necessary that response may be.

The deeper struggle is not only against those who commit violence, but also against every discourse that seeks to make violence acceptable, every environment that permits others to be stripped of their humanity, and every policy that makes citizens feel that their country has no room for them or that their voices have no value.

Therefore, defending Jordan is inseparable from defending the very idea of Jordan: a homeland where citizenship is not measured by religion or sect, where national identity is not reduced to a single narrative, and where difference does not become a gateway to threat or exclusion. This is the meaning we should take from this moment, and it is also the standard by which we should measure our ability to confront future waves of extremism.

Jordan does not need only to defend its international image; it needs to transform its message of pluralism and coexistence into internal resilience that can be measured and renewed. Preserving this message is not solely a diplomatic or religious matter; it is a political, social, cultural, and economic responsibility.