In his July 6, 2014 column in the Jordanian daily Al-Dustour, Dr. Muhannad Mubaideen bemoaned the phenomenon of young Jordanians going to wage jihad in Syria and Iraq. He warned that terrorism was attracting young Jordanians who became victims of the idea of jihad, and called for governmental action to stop the phenomenon.
Below are excerpts from his column.
"She did not know that her son, who had just graduated from university, would be killed by an explosion in Iraq. Her husband is a pious, God-fearing man who has for years frequented the mosques, and the family is religious and lives a quiet life. The [family] has no interest in any kind of extremist center, and the children live neither in an irreligious environment nor in a home where Allah's name goes unmentioned.
"So when this young man, who had just completed his studies, told his parents that he wanted to go to Turkey with his three friends, his request was not rejected, as he showed no signs of any kind of extremism that would have prevented them from consenting to his request.
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"The family agreed that their son could take this trip... and [his] mother put aside some of his favorite foods so that she could prepare them for him upon his return. But the trip took longer and still longer – until the news came that the son had died in Iraq.
"The mother refused to believe [the news of] this disaster, for her educated and respected son, who took care to live an appropriate lifestyle, had revealed to her none of his intentions. [But] his [intentions] had been actualized in his martyrdom, that robbed her prematurely of part of [her own] body. Her dreams of a celebration for his graduation ended in grief, sorrow, and anguish.
"The sights of the death and martyrdom of a young Jordanian like our friend and his comrades – some of whom were killed and some of whom returned to their families – are now common, and the stories repeat themselves again and again. Some fight with [Jabhat] Al-Nusra, others with ISIS, and there are many stories about hundreds of young Jordanians who migrated to fight in Iraq or Syria, and, prior to that, in the early 1990s, to Chechnya and the Balkans. Their numbers may already exceed 2,000.
"From their point of view, waging jihad is essential and the land of Syria has become a base for jihad for members of the [Sunni] sect – as it was in the first century of the hijra. But while then the enemy in Syria was Byzantine, there is some dispute over who it is today. Sometimes it is the Syrian regime, sometimes it is rival organizations, and sometimes it is Iran and sometimes it is Hizbullah. The important thing is that jihad fighters are leaving their families in Jordan in hopes of joining [fellow Sunnis] and waging jihad together with them.
"Today, when the sight of young people longing for jihad [and going to] wage it is common, we need to recognize the strong pull that extremism exerts on them in the name of jihad... and [that] young people are becoming its victims. Educated young people and others – unemployed and feeling a void inside – have gone to Iraq and Syria. But unemployment is not the [main] reason [for this], because some have left their jobs and gone to Syria, as happened with an official at a large national university who took a vacation to make a pilgrimage and whose trip ended in a report that he had been killed in Syria, much to the amazement of those who knew him – his family, friends, and colleagues."
"The number of the battlefronts today and the number of organizations fighting at them are [constantly] growing, and some young Jordanians are fighting each other – each in accordance with his organization and its leader. It is impossible to know the fate of those who went and did not return, but we must learn our lessons from the young people who did return, in order to open the eyes of the public and explain the mistakes that [these young people] made. We must [also] reach these young people [who returned] and learn from their mistakes – if they indeed see what happened to them as a mistake - in order to stop [other young people] from migrating for jihad.
"To date, we do not know of any organized national effort to stop [young people from] joining the Islamic organizations fighting in Iraq and Syria, or even of [any effort] to learn a lesson from their stories. What is happening for the most part is that we wait for the names of those killed after we hear of their deaths. So far, unfortunately, there are those who are convinced that we are immune to the danger of extremism and to the danger of the current strife promoting factor [that threatens us] now – [that is], ISIS."
