Writer who posted anti-Islam cartoon shot at courthouse
The Jordanian government resigned yesterday, hours after a Christian writer was shot dead outside Amman’s main courthouse where he was due to appear on charges of insulting religion.
The shooting of Nahed Hattar, 56, caused tremors in a country that bills itself as a beacon of moderate Islam, where Christians and Muslims live in harmony.
Officials said the timing of the resignation was unrelated to Hattar’s death and was simply a matter of due process following elections last week. However, the government had no need to resign for weeks. Yesterday’s decision followed calls from Hattar’s family for resignations after the government failed to ensure his safety.
The shooting, in broad daylight on one of the capital’s busiest thoroughfares, was the first of its kind in a country known for its stability and virtually omniscient security services. It is the latest in a string of extremism-related security lapses, but the first to directly affect the country’s influential Christian minority.
Hattar was arrested in August after posting a cartoon on Facebook depicting an Isis jihadi smoking a cigarette in bed with two women and ordering God to bring him a glass of wine.
In Jordan, any depiction of Allah is an offence against Islam and the cartoon set off a firestorm. Hattar was charged with violating religious laws and causing ‘‘sectarian strife and racism’’. He came from a prominent Christian family. On social media he had described himself as a ‘‘nonbeliever’’ and someone committed to pushing for greater freedom of speech.
He apologised for the cartoon, titled God of Daesh, or Isis, claiming it was intended only to mock the attitudes of Isis ‘‘terrorists and how they imagine God and heaven, and does not insult God in any way’’.
He was hit by three bullets on the steps of the court and died in hospital. A 49-year-old man was arrested at the scene. Security sources identified the gunman as Riyad Ismail Abdullah, an imam from the eastern outskirts of Amman. Witnesses said the assassin had a long beard and was wearing a traditional Islamic robe, a style favoured by ultraconservative Muslims.
As his relatives left the hospital where Hattar’s body had been taken, they shouted curses at Jordan’s interior minister, blaming the security services for failing to ensure his safety. ‘‘This happened due to the government’s negligence. They should have protected him,’’ his cousin Jamal Hattar told The Times. Hattar was known for courting controversy through his writing. He had been acquitted on charges of supporting President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.
A government spokesman said: ‘‘The law will be strictly enforced on the culprit who did this criminal act and will hit with an iron fist anyone who tries to harm the state of law.’’