![]() ![]() The footage was captured in a video posted on YouTube. “Oh Baghdadi, you who has spread terror in the hearts of our enemies, enlist me as a martyr,” chanted the sheikh over a microphone. Scores of men dressed in the kind of Afghan-style clothing often worn by radical Islamists waved Islamic State’s black flag as they gathered in an open field to listen to Jordanian Islamist Sheikh Amer Khalalyeh praise the group. In the impoverished Jordanian town of Zarqa, Zarqawi’s birthplace and a traditional stronghold of Islamist fundamentalists, support for Islamic State was on full display during Eid prayers that marked the end of the holy fasting month of Ramadan in late July. It was Abu Musab al Zarqawi, a Jordanian, who founded the Iraqi arm of al Qaeda that would eventually mutate into Islamic State. The roots of Islamic State can, in one sense, be traced to Jordan. This made people consider very seriously joining, especially since the Islamic State had officially invited them,” said Bassam Nasser, a Jordanian Islamist scholar. “Their dream was setting up the caliphate, and now they see it being achieved. The appearance of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-declared “caliph”, calling for the support of Muslims in the pulpit of a mosque in the Iraqi city of Mosul last June acted like a magnet for young Jordanian Islamists. It raises the prospect of yet more Jordanians crossing the border to fight, but also the risk of Islamic State sympathisers striking in Jordan itself - a country that has suffered Islamist militancy before, notably bomb attacks on Amman hotels by al Qaeda-linked militants during the U.S. More than 2,000 men, ranging from underprivileged youths to doctors and - in one case - an air force captain, have abandoned Jordan for jihad in Syria, according to Islamists close to the subject.Īt least 250 of them have been killed there.īut the Islamic State’s recent accomplishments are helping to galvanise support like never before among radical Islamists who dream of erasing borders across the Muslim world to establish a pan-Islamic nation. Since the civil war erupted in neighbouring Syria in 2011, hundreds of Jordanians have joined a Sunni Islamist-led insurgency against President Bashar al-Assad. “Many youths have changed their distorted view of the Islamic State after they saw their actions on the ground, their achievements, and how the West has ganged up against it,” a well-known Jordanian militant told Reuters under the assumed name Ghareeb al-Akhwan al-Urduni. Islamic State’s gains have sparked a fierce debate among Jordanian Islamists from the ultra-orthodox Salafist movement on whether to back the group, whose brutality has been criticised even within radical Islamist circles.īut buoyed by territorial gains, Islamic State’s sympathisers appear to be winning the argument. King Abdullah has said the country has never been better prepared to face the radical threat sweeping the region. Jordan’s powerful intelligence services appear to be deploying their full range of tools to counter the threat. ally mostly unscathed by the Middle Eastern turmoil of recent years. With that support come new risks for a U.S. His story points to the widening support for Islamic State among Jordanian Islamist fundamentalists inspired by its recent advances in countries that border Jordan to the east and north. He is among the first known cases of Jordanians joining Islamic State since the group declared a “caliphate” in June after dramatic territorial gains in Iraq and Syria. “His father is heartbroken, and his mother is in hospital from shock,” he said. He later called his parents from an undisclosed location to say he had “forsaken his life for the glory of Islam”, said a relative. He did not tell his family where he was going. Handsome, courteous and highly regarded in his profession as a radiologist, the man, whose name has been withheld for security reasons, disappeared in early August after the Muslim Eid holiday. A militant Islamist fighter uses a mobile to film his fellow fighters taking part in a military parade along the streets of Syria's northern Raqqa province June 30, 2014. ![]()
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