PM under fire for remarks on triple murder in US

AMMAN — A group of MPs on Tuesday criticised recent remarks by Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour on terrorism, radicalism and Islam, claiming that the premier was “justifying” the act of terror against an Arab family in North Carolina.

In a memo, the 25 signatories said they received Ensour’s remarks during a recent conference on extremism with “shock and surprise”, especially when he “attributed the main motive behind the killing of three innocent Muslims in the US town of Chapel Hill to the rise of radicals and extremists who kill people in the name of Islam”.

Muslim Syrian-American Deah Barakat and his wife, Yusor Abu-Salha, along with her sister, Razan, were shot in the head at their apartment last Tuesday.

The two sisters were Jordanian, according to the Foreign Ministry.

The victims’ neighbour, Craig Stephen Hicks, was charged with three counts of murder after turning himself in and claiming he shot the three in a “dispute for parking space”.

The MPs who signed the memo argued that Islam has been hijacked by extremists who do not represent the religion, and all true Muslims denounce these radicals’ crimes in the name of Islam, but at the same time, their actions cannot be used as justification for terrorism perpetrated against Muslims.

“How can the premier justify the other’s terror against Muslims at a time when European and American leaders have condemned the crime?” the MPs asked in the memo, calling on Ensour to “repent” for his “irresponsible crime”.

The signatories also expressed surprise over Ensour’s remark during the conference that “Jordan is neither a secular nor a religious state but a civil state”.

“We agree with the premier that Jordan is a civil state as stipulated in the Constitution… what is absurd is his description of Jordan as a non-religious state… Hasn’t he ever read Article 2 of the Constitution which states that Islam is the religion of Jordan?,” MPs asked in the memo, a copy of which was sent to The Jordan Times.