Friday sermons in Jordan condemn Karak church attack as violation of Islamic teachings

Religious leaders across Jordan strongly rejected any attempt to justify the Oct. 23 attack on a Christian church in Karak as consistent with Islamic teachings.

In Friday sermons delivered shortly after the killings, preachers emphasized the sanctity of human life and condemned the perpetrators as khawarej—outlaws of Islam—who violated both Shariah and the laws and traditions of the Jordanian state.

One sermon, titled around the sanctity of human life and the crime in Hmood, opened with Quranic verses declaring that killing a single soul without just cause is as if killing all of humanity, and that God has made life sacred except by right.

It cited prophetic traditions warning that a killer will face his victim on the Day of Resurrection and that those who kill people under Muslim protection or treaty will be denied Paradise.

The sermon stressed that Islam explicitly safeguards the rights of Christians to worship and protects houses of worship, quoting verses against compulsion in religion and against the destruction of churches, monasteries, and synagogues.

It noted the deep historical roots of Jordan’s Christian community, recalling their role in welcoming early Muslim armies and contributing to key events such as the Battle of Mutah, and described them as an authentic and integral part of Jordanian society bound by citizenship, kinship, and shared land.

The attackers, the sermon said, citing a Hadith by the Prophet Muhammad were “wild dogs of Hell” who sought to stoke sedition, sow division, shed blood, distort the image of Islam, and undermine national unity and Jordan’s positions on the Palestinian cause.

It offered condolences to the Christian community and rejected any sympathy for the ideology behind the assault.

Jordan’s Grand Mufti and other senior religious authorities issued similar statements, affirming that Christian lives are as inviolable as Muslim lives and that the attack had no basis in Islamic law.

Three gunmen opened fire on mourners at St. George’s Greek Orthodox Church in the village of Hmood in Karak Governorate during a funeral on the afternoon of 23 October, killing nine people and wounding 34 others.

The attackers arrived by vehicle and fired for several minutes with handguns and an assault rifle before fleeing.

The victims included doctors, a university professor, a pharmacist, and a lawyer; one was Mohammad al-Qassous, a Christian dentist who carried the name of the Prophet Muhammad.

The assault was described by authorities as the deadliest attack on Jordan’s Christian community in the country’s modern history.

King Abdullah II condemned the attack as terrorism, visited the wounded, and vowed the “harshest retaliation,” declaring that those who sought to divide Jordanians with bullets would fail against national unity.

Three days of national mourning were declared, and large mixed Muslim-Christian crowds attended funerals for the victims.

On 26 October, security forces arrested the three suspects—two brothers and their relative by marriage, identified as Hazaa Zidan, Mashaal Zidan, and Ahmad Sami—after a shootout at an abandoned house nearby.

Officials said the Jordanian men held takfiri extremist views and appeared to act independently.

Authorities and community leaders continued to highlight interfaith coexistence in Karak and across Jordan, where Christians form a small but longstanding minority, and investigations into the case proceeded after the arrests.