In Jordanian town, radical Islam thrives

(Clarification: A Page One story about Jordan on Sunday referred to the Arabian Gulf in describing the body of water that borders Iran to the east and Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries to the west. While most Arab countries refer to the gulf by that name, the United Nations and the US government join Iran in calling it the Persian Gulf.)

MAAN, Jordan -- Last week's triple suicide bombings might have jarred Jordan's pro-American elite in the cosmopolitan capital, but they elicit deep approval only a two-hour drive away. Here lies another Jordan, home to a thriving, hard-core Islamism practiced by young men sympathetic to terrorists and hostile to their secular government.

Maan -- along with a constellation of isolated desert towns like it throughout the Middle East -- holds the key to understanding why a significant bloc of the Arab public continues to harbor fundamentalist clerics and jihadist fighters even while their countries' leaders deploy secret police in a genuine effort to curb terrorism.

''For every action, there is a reaction," said Mahmoud Ali Abdullah, 31, a lawyer from Maan who was spending his Friday afternoon in a small grocery shop with some college students and the local muezzin, the crier who calls the faithful to prayer.

''The government has taken away the freedom of expression for the Islamists," Abdullah said.

''It creates a tension and bitterness that can lead to an explosion like what happened in Amman," Abdullah added, referring to Wednesday's attacks on three hotels that killed 57 people.

The disaffected youths of Maan offer a cautionary tale for Arab leaders and American policy-makers as they plot a strategy to combat militant Islamic groups. Fundamentalist Islam's appeal has only grown in the small city over the last five years, despite the Jordanian government's considerable interest in curbing the brand of Islamic terrorism that targets the Jordanian royal family as much as it does the West.

On Friday, the imam at the city's main mosque delivered a government-approved sermon condemning the bombings -- the first major attacks inside Jordan. More than half of those killed were Jordanians.

The imam added his own twist, lashing out at those who link Islam and terrorism.

''They call the Muslims terrorists. I have no idea why they call us terrorists," the imam said, straining the upper registers of the mosque's speakers. ''They're fighting Islam, but Islam is still spreading quickly. This is God's true religion."

Outside the mosque, a group of teenage boys confronted two journalists as they listened to the sermon, ordering them to leave.

''These attacks are not terrorism," said one boy, wearing a red-checkered kaffiyeh over his head.

''I am a terrorist," said another, wearing a black shirt and oversized black skullcap.

An older man yelled at the boys and told the reporters to ignore them: ''They are young and ignorant," he said.

Islamists believe that religion should be the driving force in government and that the Koran should replace all secular laws. Most observers tracking the Islamist revival in Jordan look to Zarqa -- the hometown of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who leads a terrorist group in Iraq and has ties to Al Qaeda -- and Salt, home to a notorious prison where Zarqawi recruited hundreds of followers in the 1990s.

But the provincial, flyblown town of Maan, with fewer than 100,000 residents, closely tracks the tribal desert culture that wields enormous transnational influence, in an arc from the Arabian Gulf to Lebanon.

In Maan, shops accept the Saudi Arabian riyal as well as the Jordanian dinar as currency. Saudi license plates are common, and many of the city's residents hold Saudi Arabian nationality -- a fact considered irrelevant to many residents, who identify themselves by tribe and religion, rather than nationality.

Maan has long been a bellwether of Jordanian politics; unrest here has often foreshadowed instability in the rest of the country. After riots here in 1989, King Hussein dismissed his government in an effort to quell public anger over a slumping Jordanian economy. In 2002, Maan was the center of an openly defiant Islamist movement led by a firebrand who led street demonstrations in support of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

King Hussein's son and successor, King Abdullah, had to send in troops. The ensuing fighting killed six and more than 150 people were arrested.

Amer Maani, 24, the muezzin who issues the call to prayer at one of Maan's peripheral mosques, blames the 2002 clash, along with US foreign policy and Jordanian repression, for the later violence of Islamists in Maan and the rest of the region.

Fundamentalist Islam's appeal skyrocketed, he said, after ''America's war in Afghanistan" and the 2002 crackdown in Maan.

After the latest bombings, Maani said, ''we expect more harassment, pressure, and arrests" by the government.

Ibrahim Gharaybeh, a columnist for the independent Al Ghad newspaper who describes himself as a former Islamist, said he believes that jobs and economic prosperity could eliminate extremism in Maan.

Tightly regulated tribal networks keep the violent tendencies of Islamists there in check, he said, unlike in Iraq, where a weak government and tribal network has allowed extremism to flourish.

The problem, however, is regional, he said. In places where no peaceful political outlet for Islamism exists, Gharaybeh said, it moves underground and takes on increasingly violent dimensions.

''Confronting these groups should happen on a global level, not on the level of the country of Jordan," he said.

Maan's harsh realities, however, suggest a different trend: the erosion of tribal authority by a growing Islamist subculture.

Sheikh Khaled H. E. al-Bazayh, a tribal leader and member of Parliament, receives guests at a hall in his home the size of an indoor soccer field. He represents the old guard that is supposed to limit the power of Islamists.

But he describes with evident anger the religious hard-liners in his own tribe who ignore his authority. Bazayh traces the splintering to the 1980s, when some Jordanians volunteered for the jihadist war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and returned home with a fiery new vision of Islam.

''There is a new style of Islamist, and they misunderstand religion," Bazayh said, dismissing its practitioners as ignorant and intolerant. ''They see a picture of the king, and say it's haram [forbidden by Islam]. They quit the army because they say the salary from the government is haram. Pretty much everything to them is haram."

One man refused to follow prayers led by Bazayh, calling him unclean because he serves in Parliament and accepts a government salary.

''His father slapped him in the face, and he never appeared in that mosque again," Bazayh said.

Jordan's government should give these young men jobs, he said, to absorb their rage and effectively buy their loyalty.

He fears that radical Islamists could spark a simmering war across the Arab world between religious extremists and governments that refuse to enact sharia, or Islamic law.

Jordan's deputy prime minister, Marwan al-Muasher, said ''the regime is stronger than ever," and that his government would not back down from its policy to destroy terrorist networks.

''This is a culture that needs to be defeated in its entirety," he told reporters. ''Freedom ends when you give yourself permission to kill innocent civilians."

That culture, which has bred legions of volunteers for holy war in Iraq and before that in Afghanistan, was on display after Friday prayers at the Salafist mosque on Maan's outskirts. Salafism is the strict strain of Islam that has given rise to the religion's most fundamentalist sects.

Six men guardedly spoke to a pair of reporters at the mosque's entrance, while two plainclothes police officers watched.

All six wore the ragged, untrimmed beard that characterizes devoutly religious Muslims, and in secular Arab states such as Jordan, Egypt, and Syria, often invites police surveillance.

''If what happened in Amman made God happy, then we are for it," said one of the men. ''If it was by God's enemies, to sow division, then we are against it."

Like the others he refused to give his name, saying ''just call me an Islamist."

A younger man spoke up as the rest of his companions headed to a waiting van.

''Our brothers have been harassed, because they are Muslims," he said, describing the regular sweeps by security services that land dozens and sometimes hundreds of Islamists in prison.

''Now the world is not at peace, because half the world is Muslim and half is non-Muslim," the man said, in halting English as his companions pulled him away and told him to stop speaking. ''But perhaps in a year, perhaps in 10 years, the whole world will be Muslim, and there will be peace."

Globe correspondent Nisreen Ziad El-Shamayleh contributed to this report.