The liberal Jordanian daily al-Ghad commissioned an Ipsos-Stat opinion survey about Abu Musab al-Zarqawi . The main findings:
- 59% of Jordanians described Zarqawi as a "terrorist"
- 67% refused to describe him as a shahid or muhajid
- 70% considered the praise of Zarqawi by 4 Islamist Parliamentarians an insult to the families of the victims of the Amman hotel bombings last November (55% said "definitely" and 15% said "to some extent"; 15% said "definitely not"). Unfortunately the survey didn't ask what Jordanians thought about their being arrested for expressing those views (kudos to Human Rights Watch for condemning those arrests; shame on much of the putatively liberal Jordanian press for failing to do the same and for responding with hostility to Human Rights Watch).
While al-Ghad highlights the positive numbers, it should be sobering that 41% did not describe Zarqawi as a terrorist, and that 15% described him as a martyr. The survey also probably understates support for jihadism in the Kingdom: Ipsos conducted the survey by telephone, with its sample drawn from the 60% of Jordanians who have telephone land-lines (that's the percentage given in the survey report) - the urban and class bias should be taken into account in evaluating the survey. You've also got to wonder how many people are going to give an honest opinion about Zarqawi to a phone caller, at a time when four Members of Parliament have just been very publicly arrested for praising him.
Two other things to keep in mind. A Center for Strategic Studies survey conducted shortly after the Amman bombings found that 72% of Jordanians considered Zarqawi's organization a terrorist one. To the extent that the surveys are comparable, that would mean a 13% drop over the last five months in the number of Jordanians viewing Zarqawi as a terrorist. And that survey found, at least among its "national sample", that distaste for Zarqawi only partially spilled over to views about bin Laden or al-Qaeda Central (only 48.9% described bin Laden's al-Qaeda as a terrorist organization compared to the 72% who described Zarqawi as such).
UPDATE: Mohamed Abu Roman breaks down the demographics of the survey in more detail than I found in yesterday's survey. He notes two key places where huge gaps appear. 76.6% of those over the age of 60 describe Zarqawi as a terrorist, compared to 54.5% of youth. 77.6% of residents of the upscale West Amman describe Zarqawi as a terrorist, compared to 51.7% of the poorer residents of East Amman. That nearly half of Jordanian youth and nearly half of East Amman expressed some support for Zarqawi, even after the Amman bombings and an intense government campaign against takfiri thought, strikes Abu Roman as something of a crisis.
Jamil al-Nimri's inferences from the survey, on the other hand, are bizarre: he assumes that "Zarqawi sympathizers" are the same as "those influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood," and concludes that the Muslim Brotherhood only influences about 15% of Jordanians since that's how many approved of Zarqawi in the survey. But there are many Muslim Brothers who condemn Zarqawi and his methods, as Nimri surely knows, and even if the survey were accurate (and there are reasons noted above - including the sample composition and phone-call methodology - to think that it understates his organization's support) it would not be a reasonable proxy for Muslim Brotherhood support.
Another UPDATE: Ahmed Humeid has a post worth reading about the media war over the Islamist MPS going on in Jordan, including the alleged confiscation of the print run of the Islamist weekly newspaper al-Sabil.
Comments