Paul KeenanJordan stands for everything IS detests, writes Paul Keenan
Amid a cacophony of Muslim outrage across the Arab world last week, there was another important sound to be heard.
On February 4, a day after news of the horrific death by fire of pilot Muath al Kaseasbeh at the hands of his Islamic State (IS) captors, Christian church bells across his native Jordan rang out in his honour.
Meanwhile, at the instruction of prelates, both Catholic and Greek Orthodox in the country, Masses were held in memory of the faithful Muslim, whose image in the simple white robes worn during his Haj pilgrimage to Mecca played alongside stills of his final moments in the orange jump suit adopted by IS for its prisoners. And, just as King Abdullah II undertook to bear personal messages of condolence to both Lieutenant Kaseasbeh’s family and tribe, so too representatives of the Christian minority communities reached out to bring their own prayers and assurances of solidarity.
Such actions came in a close second to the attention given by Western media to a possible new ‘Arab awakening’ as a result of IS reserving a singularly depraved fate for the unfortunate pilot. Perhaps more than any other time in the recent past, Muslim clerics and commentators were given segments of airtime to offer the fullest enunciation of horror greeting a fate ill-served by being labelled an ‘execution’.
Expressions
Commentary around a new unity of purpose among ordinary Muslims against IS led to the first expressions of hope that the group’s action would be its own undoing as a common humanity, be it Muslim or non-Muslim, reeled at the barbarity witnessed.
Clearly, the heart of the Christian message would demand no less a reaction than this, but for the communities in Jordan, the declarations of solidarity are fuelled also by sometimes forgotten realities when considering the ‘catch-all’ Middle East.
While religious groupings and NGOs have quite rightly pointed to the persecution felt by Christian communities as branches of Islam battled for dominance in a region redrawn since US-led invasions and the Arab spring, less acknowledgment has been offered to those individual nations and figures who have not conformed to handy stereotypes by taking active stands against the currently unfolding chaos.
Lebanon, for example, has seen its population swell by at least 25% and its infrastructure come under massive pressure in agreeing to admit refugees from the Syrian conflict. The international community has been lamentable in reaching out to assist in these efforts.
Likewise, Jordan continues to work with a wave of humanity from Iraq and Syria as IS spreads its terror in those countries. Its population has swelled by some 20% as a result. As a worrying sidebar, Caritas Jordan has signalled that its reserves for refugees will run out this month as the crisis goes on.
As the Christian bells of Jordan hint, however, that country stands as a unique Middle Eastern territory for other reasons.
Under its current leadership of King Abdullah II, Jordan continues to be a near-exemplar of Christian-Muslim relations, despite neighbouring conflagrations and the resulting fallout.
True, converts from Islam are at best frowned upon and Christian evangelising of Muslims is prohibited, but freedom of worship is guaranteed, while the nation’s parliament must, by law, reflect Christian minority input – there are currently nine seats of a total 110 reserved for Christian representatives.
A common denominator here is the king himself, a Muslim unafraid and unashamed to loudly proclaim his moderate credentials even in a sea of Arab change.
As Christian communities in the wider Arab world have been sundered by conflict, the king has kept Jordan’s secure (though it has shrunk since the 1970s) while speaking publicly of the place of Christians within Arab history and lauding that role in building Arab civilisation over 2,000 years. In more than one public address on the international stage, King Abdullah II has used terms such as ‘interfaith dialogue’ and ‘tolerance’. The hugely successful Common Word initiative (www.acommonword.com), which, as an antidote to Muslim anger over Pope Benedict XVI’s Regensburg address, draws Christian and Muslim scholars together for mutual understanding, has its roots in Jordan, having been authored by Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad of Jordan (King Abdullah’s cousin).
Such messages have not been lost on Jordanian citizens – who, it must be acknowledged, never felt compelled to send their popular leader the way of others during the Arab spring.
According to Fr Rifat Bader, pastor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Latin Rite Catholic church in Amman, when Christian refugees first reached his church from Iraq last year, veiled Muslim women quickly began to turn up with offers of help in caring for his charges, very much in keeping with the king’s vision of an Islam that is tolerant of all and in the service of all. And, while Fr Bader is on the record criticising US and Western imperatives for not including help for Christians, he will hear no word of criticism against King Abdullah II.
A week on from the killing of Lt Muath al Kaseasbeh, the oasis of tolerance that is Jordan now faces ever greater challenges in throwing down the gauntlet to IS in response.
Refusing to be divided by the savages of IS, it unwittingly invites them to try harder, even as the country sends its young men to take the fight for moderate Islam to militant strongholds in Syria and Iraq. Men like Lt al Kaseasbeh.
The bells of Jordan rang out for him because he fought for his country’s right to let them.