Some of the most extreme elements in Jordan made clear in recent weeks that Nahed Hattar should pay for a provocative cartoon he posted online depicting a bearded man in bed with two women ordering God to bring him cashews and wine.
So when Hattar, 56, a prominent writer from a Christian family, showed up at a court on Sunday to face criminal charges of insulting Islam, at least one man with a gun decided a trial was not enough.
As three bullets ripped through the writer in front of the courthouse, Jordan’s simmering tensions boiled over.
The brazen daylight killing of Hattar in front of his horrified family was not only the latest example of violence tied to cartoon renderings of Muslim figures, it was also the sort of manifestation of extremism that Jordan’s government has struggled to contain in a nation that finds itself under pressure from multiple directions.
While presenting itself as a stable outlier in a tumultuous region, Jordan maintains a complicated balancing act of its own, split between traditional tribes, Palestinians, a potent extremist community and now more than 650,000 refugees from the grinding civil war in Syria.
As Jordan strives to stay neutral in Syria and off the Islamic State’s radar, the cartoon Hattar posted on Facebook proved just the sort of lighter fuel to feed the flames.
Never mind that after an across-the-board social media backlash, Hattar quickly removed the cartoon, deactivated his Facebook account and apologized, saying he “did not mean to offend anyone.”
If the government hoped that arresting him would tamp down the anger among the more violent sections of Jordanian society, it misjudged.
Family members accused authorities of not doing enough to guard him against death threats.
“Nahed apologized about the cartoon,” Hattar’s cousin Saif Hattar said.
“It was misunderstood. We believe the ISIS poisonous mentality was the cause of this but the government failed to protect him,” he said, using one of the Islamic State’s many acronyms.
A suspect in the shooting was captured near the scene, according to the government, which vowed harsh action.
“We will hold the perpetrator who committed this despicable act to justice, and the government will respond with an iron fist to anyone who uses this incident as an opportunity to spread hate speech in society,” government spokesman Mohammad Momani said in a statement.
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