Beards on Pulpits and Bullets in Churches: From Ostentatious Religiosity to the Hamoud Church Massacre

Introduction: From the Religion of the Heart to the Religion of Appearance

Last Friday, armed men stormed the St. George Greek Orthodox Church in the village of Hamoud in the Karak Governorate and opened fire on worshippers, killing nine innocent people in a place of prayer whose people were praying for security in this country. Yesterday, we wrote about the crime itself and the shock that shook all Jordanians, Muslims and Christians alike. Today, we must ask the more difficult question: In what soil did these killers grow? And who watered it while we looked on and did not see?

In the authentic hadith narrated by Muslim: "Indeed, Allah does not look at your appearances or your wealth, but He looks at your hearts and your deeds." One sentence is enough to demolish an entire structure we have built over half a century, a structure that inverted the scale’s balance, so people began to look at appearances and wealth, leaving hearts and deeds to God alone, as if they were matters that do not concern them.

Since the rise of political Islam in the 1970s, large sectors of Muslims have gradually shifted from the religion of essence to what can be called "ostentatious religiosity": religiosity measured by the length of the beard, the style of the hijab, the type of clothing, and the number of times God is mentioned in speech, not by the sincerity of dealings, cleanliness of hands, or refraining from harm. Religion became a facade to be displayed, not a life to be lived.

The danger in this transformation is not only that it is superficial, but that it blinds. A society that measures faith by appearance loses the ability to see what is happening behind the facade. And behind the facade, in recent decades, extremism has grown silently, feeding on this very blindness..

Religiosity as Social Capital: How Reputations Are Washed by Appearances

When religious appearance becomes a currency in circulation, religiosity turns into a market. Those who master the display in it gain status and have the doors opened to prestige, trust, marriage, commerce, and leadership in councils. This is what sociology calls "symbolic capital": an intangible asset spent in the social market as money is spent.

The most dangerous aspect of this market is that it accepts washing reputations just as banks accept laundering dirty money. A man known for cheating, injustice, or consuming others’ rights only needs to let his beard grow, stay in the front row, and scatter phrases of piety, so society forgets his past and presents him for imamate, mediation, and issuing fatwas. No public repentance, no restitution of wrongs, no apology to those he wronged. Appearance alone suffices to erase history..

One of the clearest forms of this ostentation is the competition in building and decorating mosques—not out of need, but as a boast among donors: a mosque taller than another, a dome wider than another, and a marble plaque bearing the benefactor’s name in a font bolder than the Ayat al-Kursi. The Prophet, peace be upon him, warned specifically against this, as narrated by Abu Dawood with an authentic chain: "The Hour will not come until people compete in boasting in mosques." A mosque built for boasting is a witness against its owners, not for them, while the mosque’s neighbor sleeps hungry, its youth search for work, and the neighborhood school awaits someone to repair its roof..

The harsh paradox is that a society that holds a girl accountable for a strand of hair does not hold a merchant accountable for a rigged scale, nor an official for embezzled public funds, as long as the latter performs his role well. Thus, religion turns from a monitor of behavior into a cover for it.

The Pulpit That Sows Discord: Ignorance of Discourse and Hatred of Diversity

Extremism did not grow in a vacuum. It grew in the soilA religious, rhetorical speech, delivered from a pulpit by someone who possesses nothing of knowledge except a loud voice, and nothing of eloquence except what stirs emotions and incites anger. A speech whose owner memorizes the tales of battles but is ignorant of the tales of mercy, cites verses of fighting out of context, and remains silent about verses of acquaintance, justice, and kindness.

This speech divides the world into two camps: “us,” the survivors, and “them,” the doomed. And “them” here is an ever-growing list: the Christian and the Jew, then the Shiite and the Sufi, then the Muslim who does not resemble us in his clothing, prayer, or opinion. Whoever is raised to believe that difference is betrayal needs only a small step to see the different as an enemy, and an even smaller step to see his blood as permissible.

Thus are formed the “flocks of Islamists”: young men none of whom have read a single jurisprudence book, yet they possess the audacity to declare others apostates, distributing certificates of faith and disbelief as a clerk distributes stamps. Behind them are sheikhs who have never carried a weapon, but who have charged minds with ideas that make bearing arms the logical outcome. Words always precede bullets, and whoever crafts the words is a partner in what the bullet produces.

The Sunnah of Difference and the Destruction of Villages: The Monolithic Society in the Scale of the Qur’an

Advocates of ostentatious religiosity desire a society shaped in a single mold: one dress, one food, one daily rhythm, one opinion. They impose this in the name of religion, while the Qur’an itself clearly says otherwise without room for interpretation.

God Almighty says: ﴿O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you﴾. The address here is to all people, not Muslims alone, and the purpose of diversity is acquaintance, not conflict. The sole criterion for distinction is piety, which is a matter of the heart that no one can measure with a ruler on clothing or beard.

And He says: ﴿And if your Lord had willed, He could have made mankind one community; but they will not cease to differ﴾. Difference is a divine will and a universal law, and whoever tries to erase it not only fights humanity but resists the Creator’s will. And He says: ﴿There is no compulsion in religion﴾, so if there is no compulsion in the essence of religion, how could there be compulsion in details of clothing, food, and customs?

Notably, the verse immediately preceding the verse of difference in Surah Hud says: ﴿And your Lord would not destroy the cities unjustly while their people were reformers﴾. The proximity of these two verses is no coincidence in a precise book. A thoughtful reading links them: villages are not destroyed by diversity but by corruption, and reform does not come by casting people into one mold. History confirms this reading; monolithic societies that became narrow toward the different became narrow toward themselves, corroded from within until they fell. Meanwhile, Islamic civilization flourished in Baghdad and Cordoba when it expanded to include Jews, Christians, philosophers, and dissenters, and declined when it narrowed.

From Appearance to Blood: Crimes in the Name of Islam Against Others

When these elements accumulate—a society measuring faith by appearance, a pulpit sowing hatred, and a culture seeing the different as an enemy—the result is blood. And we have seen it repeatedly.

We saw it in Egypt, where churches were targeted during Christian holidays and worshippers were killed on Palm Sunday while raising palm fronds. We saw it in Iraq and Syria when Christian and Yazidi communities were displaced from lands they had lived in for centuries before Islam. We saw it in Europe when Jewish synagogues and worshippers were targeted, causing innocent people to pay the price for a conflict they had no part in, and millions of Muslims living there to pay the price of suspicion and hatred. Today we see it in Jordan, the country that has long been a target...A model of coexistence, where the church and the mosque share the neighborhood, family, and memory. In Hammoud, the small village in Karak, nine worshippers fell to the bullets of those who thought they were drawing closer to God by killing His servants. And this alone is enough to shatter the comforting illusion that any country is immune because of its history; no society is immune if it leaves the soil of hatred fertile and then is surprised by what it grows..

The same scene repeats every time: cold condemnation statements, and the rehearsed phrase that “these do not represent Islam,” then everyone returns to their lives as if nothing happened. But the question everyone avoids: If they do not represent Islam, who taught them that they do? And who remained silent while they were learning this in mosques, schools, and satellite channels?

These criminals and those who shaped their minds are the greatest offenders against Islam throughout its modern history. Not all of Islam’s opponents combined have done to its image what an explosive device in a church or a knife in the hand of a young man shouting “Allahu Akbar” has done. They have turned the most beautiful call in a Muslim’s life into a scream of terror in the ears of the world.

The responsibility of every Muslim: Silence is complicity

This does not mean that every Muslim is guilty of a crime they did not commit; the Qur’an is decisive: ﴿No bearer of burdens will bear the burden of another﴾. But there is a difference between criminal sin and moral responsibility. The killer alone bears the blood of his victim, but the environment that gave birth to him and remained silent about his upbringing bears the responsibility that it did not prevent him..

The authentic hadith is clear on this: “Whoever among you sees an evil, let him change it with his hand; if he cannot, then with his tongue; if he cannot, then with his heart—and that is the weakest of faith.” The weakest of faith is not silence, but rejection in the heart, and rejection in the heart does not coexist with admiration for a preacher who excommunicates people, nor with donating to a pulpit that spreads hatred, nor with sending children to those who teach them that their Christian neighbor is an enemy. Abu Ali Al-Daqqaq, one of the Sufi imams, was truthful in his saying that has become proverbial: “He who remains silent in the face of truth is a mute devil. .

The responsibility of the Muslim today is threefold.

First, to cleanse himself internally before defending his religion before others. There is no meaning in being angry at an offensive drawing in a foreign newspaper and remaining silent about a preacher who insults Islam every Friday from a pulpit in our neighborhood..

Second, to protect his religion from its hijackers by refusing to let the ignorant speak in its name, demanding a religious discourse based on knowledge, not zeal, and questioning those who teach his children what they teach them..

Third, to raise the banner of diversity and plurality as part of his religion, not a concession. To stand with his Christian neighbor on his holiday, with the Jewish temple when it is targeted, and with the Muslim who differs from him when he is excommunicated—not out of political courtesy, but out of faith that God created people different..

A religion that its people do not defend from within is defined from outside by its worst aspects..

Conclusion: reclaiming religion from its hijackers

Islam does not need more towering minarets or more beards and cloaks; it needs Muslims who resemble what they say. It needs an honest merchant more than a donor who writes his name on marble, a trustworthy neighbor more than a loud preacher, and a clean heart more than a short garment.

Religion has been hijacked twice: once by those who made it a facade for prestige, and once by those who made it a pretext for killing. And the hijackers, no matter how much they may seem to differ,Difference, one feeds off the other; showmanship creates blindness, and blindness leaves the field open to extremism.

The restoration of religion will not come from governments or official institutions alone, but from every Muslim who decides to look in the mirror before looking at others' clothes, who raises their voice when they hear hate speech, and who remembers that God will ask about their heart and deeds, not about their appearance and wealth.

The blood of Musalli Hammoud is not only the blood of Christians, but a question hanging around the neck of every Muslim: What have you done so that this does not happen? And what will you do so that it does not recur?

﴿Indeed, Allah does not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves﴾.