Post Amman Attacks: Jordanian Public Opinion and Terrorism

There have been a number of published opinion polls that have tried to uncover the level of support Arabs and Muslims have for terrorism. Many of these studies have come to the conclusion that Arabs and Muslims generally support terrorism, with slight variations from one country to another. Nonetheless, the majority of these polls did not take into account the political dimensions of terrorism. In order to add more insight to the already available body of literature and information about terrorism, and to further advance the discourse, the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan developed, in 2004, a framework to examine public opinion on terrorism. The framework consists of three approaches to investigate terrorism: The first approach aims to examine the perspective on “killing of civilians of an occupying state that occupies a Muslim country”. The second approach aims to examine the views of citizens on whether the following organizations: Hamas, Hizballah, al-Qaeda led by Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi, and al-Qaeda led by Osama Bin Laden, are “legitimate resistance organizations” or “terrorist organizations”. The third approach examines the citizens’ views on various actions that have been carried out by organizations or armed forces belonging to a state, and whether they are viewed as terrorist or non-terrorist. This framework will lead to an understanding of the citizens’ views and understanding of terrorism. Using this approach the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan conducted a public opinion poll on the subject of terrorism between the 1^st and 7^th of December, 2005. The total national sample of respondents in the poll amounted to 1417 respondents distributed throughout the Kingdom. The sample was constructed following the method of multi-stage cluster design, which takes into account proportional distribution to the size of the population in each governorate.