We were sitting inside my car, which was parked in front of a cliff overlooking Zarqa, a city to which the entire world had been oblivious until it was publicized by the notorious Jihadist Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi. That initial question led to a swift exchange of subsequent questions and answers between me and Majdi. I then came to realize that Mohammed was one of our colleagues during high school, and he's currently in Syria fighting alongside Al-Nusra Front. If Majdi hadn't shown me a YouTube video in which Mohammed Abu Alia was giving a pep talk to his comrades in Al-Nusra Front, I wouldn't have believed anyone telling me that Mohammed—the guy we had known for years—has turned into a jihadist.
"Nobody knows if he's still alive or not," Majdi, who once was Mohammed's best friend, said in a joyless tone of voice.
Unlike Majdi, I'd never been a best friend of Mohammed, but he was a well-known student in high school thanks to his astounding skills in soccer. However, I didn't need to be that close to him to realize he'd never ever think of joining such a paramilitary group. He was a temperate Muslim; he had never shown any signs of being interested in jihad, martyrdom, revolutionism, or any other convoluted concepts at which religion and politics grotesquely overlapped.
But Mohammed was neither the first nor the last person whose mindset had undergone an "extreme" makeover. My city—ever since the downfall of its most infamous "warrior", Abu Musab—has been witnessing an alarming increase in the number of young men abandoning their homes to actualize their distorted dreams of becoming intrepid jihadists defending the defenseless in the name of that omnipotent God for whom they're willing to elatedly sacrifice themselves in Iraq and Syria. Almost each and every single one of them ends up being a pawn effortlessly controlled to serve slightly superior stooges who serve masterful puppeteers with unrighteous agendas. The Jordanian government has been trying—in vain—to conceal all information related to this unnerving issue of youth joining "terrorist" organizations. Not a week passes by without a news story or an article about one of those men getting published on the internet by independent, local, news websites or bloggers.
In an attempt to explicate this choice these individuals made, one of the opinions argues that these guys had no bright future, and that they were fitting for such outcome, but that's absolutely incorrect. Mohammed Abu Alia, among tens of others about whom I read on the web, refutes that theory. He was an academically distinguished student and a top-quality athlete. Another opinion says that Islamic devoutness paves the way for a darker ideology to unfold in later stages, transforming the worshipers into merciless executioners, but that's also incorrect. It is, indeed, a possible result for a Muslim to metamorphose into a terrorist, but it wouldn't be fair to blame Islam for that; it's the follower of the religion who should be solely blamed. There are also tens of stories about Christian, Jewish, and Hindu extremists; and similarly, the faith itself shouldn't be the ascription of any atrocities committed in its name. The third and last opinion, out of the most common ones, states that this problem is attributed to the aforethought, systematic, political impoverishment of youth. The empowering, constitutional amendments have been too scarce; and the poorly fabricated, theatrical, political pluralism is not quenching the thirst of any intellectual citizens who feel deprived of their right to create a healthy, political atmosphere; and consequently, people in Jordan can't be deemed bona fide contributors or practitioners in the realm of politics. This inexperience in politics, according to the supporters of this third opinion, made the youth fail to politically examine the situation in Syria, which resulted in the erroneous decision of partaking in the armed conflict. I'd really love to support that last theory, as I've always felt politically marginalized by my government, but it's too unrealistic and prejudiced against the government.
I've been contemplating a lot recently, trying to designate a logical rationale behind this phenomenon, but I only came up with an arbitrary one: there's some sort of sickening, ungodly, twisted glamour in the story of Abu Musab; and it's that glamour my fellow countrymen have been falling for in large numbers.
Irrespective of the real reasons, I can't help but bemoan the potentially great man Mohammed could’ve been if he had not taken a deviated route within the course of his fate.
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For reasons that should be fucking obvious, all names—and some minor details—mentioned in this article are fictitious .
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