Jordanian Christians: Neither Identity Cancels Out the Other
A few days ago, armed terrorists opened fire on mourners at Hammoud Church in Karak Governorate, killing nine people and wounding dozens more. This was not the first time the governorate had faced a terrorist attack. In December 2016, it witnessed the Karak Castle attack, for which ISIS claimed responsibility. The latest atrocity provoked widespread anger and condemnation among Jordanians, both officially and across society. These condemnations were accompanied by a clear affirmation that the Christian victims were Jordanians, and that an attack against them was an attack against Jordan as a whole.
This affirmation was necessary, first and foremost, because of what it preserves about the bonds among Jordanians. Major events, and the ways in which they are discussed and addressed, can contribute to redrawing boundaries between communities within a society. When violence targets certain members of society because of their religious affiliation, it becomes essential to prevent that targeted identity from becoming a boundary separating them from others, and to ensure that the crime does not succeed in creating the very social distance implicit in the perpetrators’ worldview.
This is closely connected to the nature of Jordanian society itself. Christians are an integral part of the region’s history and its social and tribal fabric, and have participated in shaping both its society and its collective experience. The identities through which Jordanians understand themselves and one another are inherently layered. Geography, tribe, family, neighbourhood, and shared history intersect within them, with religious affiliation forming part of these overlapping bonds. It is through these relationships that Christians have understood themselves and been recognised by others. The anger over what happened to them is therefore the anger of Jordanians at the suffering of their fellow citizens. Reducing solidarity with them to their Christian identity alone risks suggesting sympathy for a community outside society, when they are, in fact, an integral part of it.
Yet the importance of this affirmation raises a further question about the limits of relying on it alone. If reducing the victims to their Christian identity risks creating distance between them and their society, defining them exclusively through their national identity may, in turn, obscure an essential dimension of why they were targeted and the social and ideological problems this reveals. The importance of recognising both dimensions becomes clear when we consider the intersecting contexts in which the attack occurred: what Jordan and the wider region are facing, and what vulnerabilities within our societies might be exploited to carry out such attacks.
At the regional and global levels, Israel and right-wing forces in Europe and the United States are engaged in efforts to redefine Arabs and Muslims as a threatening “Other” to be feared and confronted. Following the damage inflicted on Israel’s image by the war in Gaza, these efforts have become increasingly important to restoring its standing in the West. Within this narrative, Palestinians are subsumed into a broader Arab and Muslim collective portrayed as an environment of extremism and hostility towards difference, while Israel presents itself as the force confronting this threat on behalf of the West and protecting it from its spread.
Netanyahu articulated this logic when he presented his war before the US Congress as a confrontation between civilisation and barbarism, linking threats against Israel to what he described as threats to Western civilisation posed by “radical Muslims” within Europe and the United States. Such language allows those who embrace it to shift the debate away from occupation, its abuses, and Palestinian rights towards an alleged threat represented by Arabs and Muslims. Within this framework, attacks against Christians in the region become material that can be exploited to reproduce and reinforce this image.
The Jordanian model challenges this narrative. Its social stability, the interwoven nature of its communal ties, and the longstanding presence of Christians within its social fabric contradict the portrayal of a region that persecutes and rejects those who are different. Religious diversity in Jordan has not become a basis for sectarian division. Undermining this model therefore serves efforts to damage its cohesion and turn attacks against some of its citizens into apparent evidence supporting the image being promoted of Arabs and Muslims.
From this perspective, the meaning attached to the attack may serve two interconnected purposes: transforming differences within society into divisions, and then presenting those divisions as evidence of the character of the entire region. This, in turn, makes it easier to portray sympathy for Palestinians, and Arabs more broadly, as sympathy for backward and extremist societies incapable of accepting difference. The struggle over how the victims are defined, and how their relationship with their society is understood, thus becomes part of a wider struggle over how the region itself is defined and the political meaning of defending its peoples.
This brings us once again to the importance of affirming the victims’ Jordanian identity. Such an affirmation safeguards national unity while challenging attempts to present the attack as an expression of the true relationship between Jordan’s communities. In this context, the coincidence in timing of the Karak attack, the attack in Paris, and the bombing in the Armenian neighbourhood of Homs also raises questions about possible connections among them. Regardless of whether suspicions of coordination prove justified, these incidents converge in their consequences: they serve the narratives of Zionism and the far right in Europe and the United States, distort the region’s image, and inflame its internal tensions. These consequences demand action to protect the cohesion of our society and the way it is perceived.
Addressing these consequences makes it all the more urgent to examine conditions at home. Whether or not Israeli involvement is established in interpreting what happened, we must ask what would enable such interference to operate effectively, and where the individuals, ideas, and networks susceptible to exploitation might be found. The possibility of external intervention heightens our responsibility to understand the local conditions that could provide it with the means to act. Here lies the importance of a comprehensive understanding of the victims’ identities, one that keeps their Christian identity central to understanding why they were targeted, alongside their national identity.
Simply stating that the victims were Jordanians may leave the ideology that legitimises targeting them as Christians beyond scrutiny. Concern for national unity may then become a reason to overlook the very problems society needs to confront in order to preserve that unity. Acknowledging this dimension does not mean treating extremism as a defining characteristic of society, or assuming that hostility towards Christians is widespread within it. Even if such tendencies remain limited, their potential to be translated into violence, or exploited to penetrate society, provides sufficient reason to examine them closely.
This calls for a deeper examination of our society and the forces operating within it. How does a willingness to attack those perceived as different develop? What provides its justification and enables it to turn into action? At what point do social bonds lose their capacity to prevent it? Extremist ideas, social fragility, competing interests, and networks of influence may interact in this process, and their connections to violence require careful investigation. Such an inquiry must examine the discourse that normalises discrimination, the spaces in which individuals form their perceptions of others, and the conditions that make some susceptible to recruitment. Acknowledging the history of coexistence does not absolve us of this responsibility. Similarly, describing the attack as alien to society’s values does little to explain how it found individuals willing to carry it out.
Responding to what happened requires maintaining two perspectives simultaneously: affirming national unity and recognising the extremist terrorist nature of the crime. Protecting that unity requires confronting the terrorist motivation behind the attack in its full significance while recognising that the victims’ identities extend beyond the grounds on which they were targeted. A comprehensive understanding of their identities makes it possible to uphold their shared national belonging while acknowledging the threat they faced because of one dimension of their complex identities. It also allows Jordan to confront threats originating from abroad while addressing vulnerabilities that may be exploited from within.
These two perspectives place responsibilities upon us at two levels. Externally, protecting Jordan requires defending its identity and image, and mobilising its international relationships to counter Israel, its allies, and extremist forces on the other side, as well as the narratives they promote, particularly in the media. In my assessment, the Jordanian state is already performing this role with distinction, taking the lead among the various actors involved.
Domestically, responsibility lies in strengthening social and institutional engagement and revitalising a public sphere that enables civic, social, political, and partisan participation, organisation, and interaction. Social, religious, political, and civil society institutions are uniquely positioned to address divisions and correct imbalances from within society itself. The security services perform their important role in maintaining order and monitoring threats, with an effectiveness in which Jordanians have long taken pride. Yet security measures cannot substitute for the work of these institutions in managing internal tensions and addressing their underlying causes.
This approach extends to confronting all forms of extremism and examining social fractures of every kind, as well as the spaces that may be exploited to fragment Jordanian society or damage its image. Such an analysis moves beyond explaining a single incident towards a broader framework for understanding events of this kind. It reveals how social diversity can be turned into an instrument of division, and connects the protection of national cohesion to addressing the vulnerabilities that may be exploited to undermine it.