History for Dummies: Jordan

Dr. Walid Phares has a succinct and - more importantly - reasonable analysis of yesterday's bombings in Jordan. He explains by giving precious background (note to the mainstream news media: this is called "history"):

First, one has to consider the weight of Jordan's religious divisions. Jordan is ruled by a prominent Arab Muslim dynasty, the Hashemites, who are a serious competitor to the Wahhabis. The Hashemites are not the equivalent of Monaco's princes in Europe. In the Arab world, the ancestors of the Hashemite King Abdallah were the legitimate rulers of Mecca and Medina until the Saudi clan of Wahhabis "invaded" Western Arabia in the 1920s. The remnant of the Hashemites established TransJordan with the help of the British as Wahhabism took hold of the peninsula and its religious shrines. Since then, the Saudi Kingdom exported fundamentalism, while the Hashemite Kingdom established a monarchy. The result: two fundamentally opposing views of Islam and the world.

He then gives his "root cause" assessment:

The "root cause" of Islamist action against Jordan is this: the Hashemites are moderate Muslims, possibly the most successful in distancing their religion from Zarqawi's barbarism. Jordan is modernizing and has become friendly with the U.S., the UK, Europe, and Arab moderates.

I don't think most people know that Zarqawi - the face of jihadism, terrorism, and Al-Qaeda in Iraq is a Jordanian national. In bombing Amman, he's a little like Jordan's Timothy McVeigh, albeit a heck of a lot more "successful" in his freakish designs.