Queen of Jordan Calls on Arab World to Denounce Islamic State
Jordan's queen has issued a statement blasting the Islamic State one day after the United Nations implored Arab countries to voice their opposition to the terrorist organization.
Queen Rania of Jordan accused the terror group of trying to "hijack" the Arab world and bring the Middle East back into the "dark ages" during a statement at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit in the United Arab Emirates.
"A minority of irreligious extremists is using social media to rewrite our narrative and hijack our identity," Jordan's monarch said, as reported by the Daily Mail. "That's what ISIS is doing to the Arab world and all of us."
The queen went on to reference the recent videos released via Islamic State social media accounts that show the beheading of aid workers and journalists, most recently the severed head of American aid worker Peter Kassig.
"These images don't represent me any more than they represent you. They're alien and abhorrent to the vast majority of Arabs […] and they should make every Arab across this region seethe," Rania said.
"At the heart of the assault is an ideology," the queen continued. "And if you think you can defeat an ideology with a bullet, think of what happened when Osama bin Laden was killed. Sure he died, but his legacy is an even stronger, more twisted extremist movement. We must create a new narrative and broadcast it to the world. Because if we don't decide what our identity is and what our legacy will be, the extremists will do it for us."
Rania's comments come one day after Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, the United Nations' top commissioner for human rights, asked all Arab countries to denounce the Islamic State. Al Hussein is a member of the Jordanian royal family.
The U.N. high commissioner said in a statement that it is "disturbing how few to nonexistent have been the public demonstrations of anger in the Arab and Muslims worlds over the crimes being perpetrated in Iraq — notwithstanding the clear condemnation by many Arab and Islamic governments."
"The scale and violence of ISIL's brutality towards civilians shreds every principle relevant to human rights," the high commissioner added.
