And think of this. Had the Jordanian pilot not been killed in the way he was, but instead the Japanese journalist been th eone burned to death, would Jordan be outraged, would angry Jordanians take to the streets? Of course not. They wouldn't be upset at all. And they'd have been glad, stepping over the ashes of the Japanese journalist, to trade Al-Rishawi, now due to be executed in a few hours, for the Jordanian pilot.

There are, after all, plenty of imams and others in Jordan already on record, and videotaped, denouncing the Jordanian participation, however infinitesmal it may have been, in the bombing campaign against ISIS. What will they do right now? Probably stay very quiet. They are patient. They know their day will come.

The King of Jordan, shaky on his throne, is attempting to make sure that the people in his country are whipped up against ISIS, for they could just as easily be whipped up, under other circumstances, against him. The "ferocious" reaction of Jordan is not based on principle, but on the need to keep the street under control, and by having the Kawasbah tribe, the one that is given pride of place since it was one of theirs who was killed, start things going, this may prevent those -- and they are many in Jordan -- who support ISIS from being too noisy.

Comments



jeff fixler

How true! The Jordanian Arabs are reaping the harvest they have sown just as all the Muslim Arabs have. When Israel killed the terrorists who killed the three teenage boys last year, the Jordanian "Parliament" held a prayer vigil for the poor Jihadists. We have seen no protests in Muslim lands over the slaughter of non-Muslims occurring pretty much on a daily basis-- let alone protests over the videos of beheadings of non-Muslims now ubiquitous. The Muslim world created ISIS, and Al Qaeda, and Boko Haram, and Al-Shabaab ,and the hundreds, if not thousands, of other groups that strictly follow the tenants of Islam. Now, they want us to do their dirty work for them and rid them of the menace that is a logical consequence of Islam taken to heart. Let the Muslim world gear up for a major military engagement with their supposed enemy, the Islamic State. They have copious quantities of arms provided by the West, and fabulous oil wealth to finance a protracted conflict. Where are all the Saudi and Kuwaiti ground forces --"boots on the ground"as American policy makers like to say--battling bravely against the Islamic State? ISIS is no threat to overthrow any Western democracy, but they pose a threat to the Kingdoms of Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Let them battle ISIS if they have the stomach for it. And if they don't have the stomach for it, then we should ask why that is?



3 Feb 2015How true! The Jordanian Arabs are reaping the harvest they have sown just as all the Muslim Arabs have. When Israel killed the terrorists who killed the three teenage boys last year, the Jordanian "Parliament" held a prayer vigil for the poor Jihadists. We have seen no protests in Muslim lands over the slaughter of non-Muslims occurring pretty much on a daily basis-- let alone protests over the videos of beheadings of non-Muslims now ubiquitous. The Muslim world created ISIS, and Al Qaeda, and Boko Haram, and Al-Shabaab ,and the hundreds, if not thousands, of other groups that strictly follow the tenants of Islam. Now, they want us to do their dirty work for them and rid them of the menace that is a logical consequence of Islam taken to heart. Let the Muslim world gear up for a major military engagement with their supposed enemy, the Islamic State. They have copious quantities of arms provided by the West, and fabulous oil wealth to finance a protracted conflict. Where are all the Saudi and Kuwaiti ground forces --"boots on the ground"as American policy makers like to say--battling bravely against the Islamic State? ISIS is no threat to overthrow any Western democracy, but they pose a threat to the Kingdoms of Saudi Arabia and Jordan. Let them battle ISIS if they have the stomach for it. And if they don't have the stomach for it, then we should ask why that is?

4 Feb 2015

Christina McIntosh

Yes. Had the Japanese hostage been burnt alive not one person in the Ummah would have cared two hoots. And I notice something else; that when, not so very long ago, a mob of *hundreds* of allahu-akbaring Muslim townspeople - NOT members of 'Islamic State', but just plain old local Muslims - lynched an utterly defenceless Christian couple, beat them savagely, and then hurled them - still living, if barely - into a brick kiln furnace to be burnt alive, burnt to ashes - not *one* Western non-Muslim leader, certainly not Barack Obama, uttered even the tiniest squeak of condemnation against Islamic Pakistan, on whose soil that atrocity took place, nor any public condemnation of the vicious cruelty and barbarism of the howling Muslim mob that committed the atrocity and which will, I guarantee, not suffer even a pretence of punishment from the Authorities in Pakistan. And what heinous crime had those two Christians committed? NOTHING. They had, it seemed, asked either for wages - or for a very, very modest rise in wages - from their corrupt, despotic Muslim overlord or slavemaster who owned the brick factory where they worked. So in order to get rid of them, he circulated a rumour - a malevolent, false rumour - that they had, forsooth, burned a Koran. He knew what the Muslim mob would do. And in Islamic Pakistan, the government and judiciary and police connive in such viciousness, every single day. And the USA, and the UK, and others, go on blindly, obediently, cringingly pouring the jizya into the coffers of Islamic Pakistan. I would like to know why President Obama is so very much exercised over the Muslim murder of a Muslim pilot, when it is perfectly plain that he doesn't give a damn about those two poor murdered Pakistani Christians, or about Asia Bibi on death row. And why so many other western leaders of non-Muslim countries, these days, seem to have a similar double standard: get all upset about Muslims killing Muslim teenage boys in a school in Peshawar, say, but be wholly silent about Muslims killing non-Muslims - for example, they said NOTHING whatsoever when the congregation of All Saints' church, Peshawar, in an equally horrible atrocity, was bombed a couple of years ago, killing many, mostly women and children.



