World has begun to adopt holistic approach to terror — King

AMMAN — His Majesty King Abdullah has said that Jordan’s international partners in the fight against terrorist groups have started to adopt the comprehensive approach Jordan has been preaching.

He made his remarks at a question and answer session following his speech at the Centre of Interdisciplinary Studies of Contemporary Islam at the Catholic University in  Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium on Wednesday.

In response to a question, His Majesty outlined Jordan’s intra and interfaith efforts over the past 12 years, foremost of which the Amman Message, which was followed by efforts  to make reconciliation within Islam.

“We came out with three major lessons out of that or messages. One is defining what Islam is and what it isn’t. The main thing was being able to recognise the different schools of jurisprudence within Islam, which is the eight major schools of jurisprudence inside of our religion. The second part, which was equally important, is forbidding takfirism. And this is what we call the extremists, or khawarej, do today by basically calling the rest of us heretics, let alone the non-Muslims. And this was very important to do to bring the Muslims together as a faith.

Thirdly, and again with equal importance, is how you establish the principles of creating fatwas. … The problem that we have with terrorists today is they come with a fatwa which says, yes, it is right to put a bomb on yourself and go and blow yourself up in a public square. Anybody who has principles of morals and virtues knows it has nothing to do with any religion.” 

His Majesty reiterated that the main challenge now is the khawarej, the outlaws of Islam, stressing that it is a global threat.

“We have the challenges of Boko Haram and Al Shabab; we want to nip the potential challenges in the Balkans before it becomes a problem; but there are also problems in Asia. So if we don’t look at it from a holistic point of view, and realise that this is a global threat which brings us all together, then we will never get it right,” the King said.

He added: “Luckily with the government of Belgium, and many others in Europe and the west, we have had these meetings in Jordan where we are addressing, with your government and others, how do we deal with our East African neighbours. We have been working with the Al Shabab challenge of this, we have been working on the Balkan challenge. The Boko Haram will be talked about in the near future”. 

“So, people are beginning to come together on the holistic approach and not to get to the point of putting schools of jurisprudence against each other. We all understand that we are all on one side of this issue, against the enemy and identifying the enemy as the khawarej.”

On the refugee crisis, the King told his audience that 25 per cent of the Jordanian national budget went to cover the difference between international assistance and actual needs. “So every year we are borrowing more from the international banks, we’re sliding more into debt. So how much further can Jordan go on?” 

On Jordan’s approach to the crisis, the King said that instead of handing aid to refugees, it is more feasible to create an ability and a capability for Jordan to create jobs so that “we can look at the challenge from a long-term perspective” and create jobs for refugees and Jordanians.

The King acknowledged that terrorists cross the border into Jordan, which is working with partners “to make sure that we protect ourselves and we are working very hard with your country and others so that you can protect yourselves too”.  But Jordan will not deny refugees the haven they seek, he said.