Jordanians' Feelings Mixed on Attacks

"I feel frustrated, because I didn't expect this will happen because our country is basically secured," said Amani Omari, 40, a computer typist. The bombers "are not Islamists. They have no relationship with Islam. Islam doesn't encourage bombings or killings."

Omari said Jordanians have not come out strongly against such terrorism in the past. Even now, she said, "there are specific cases that I sympathize with, but not all of them."

Rafea Abdullah Dagehl, 48, a retired businessman, said motives did not matter to him. "They killed children," he said, pausing in a vegetable market. "The guy who did this, he's a criminal even if he's Muslim."

Jordan is a relatively moderate Islamic nation. Its wealthy elite in Amman are eager to embrace Western culture. The king, who was educated in the West, promotes democracy and has championed Muslims to stand together against extremism. After the bombings, Abdullah told Petra, the official news agency, that radical Muslims have "no place among us."

But Jordan is also a country with a widening economic gap. Most Jordanians could not afford to spend the night in -- or even treat themselves to coffee and pastries in the lobby of -- one of the three hotels that was bombed. "We had one of those kinds of hotels in Irbid," Moussa said, as he drove around the city with a visitor. "They closed it. Nobody could afford to stay there."

Moussa acknowledged that some of his anger came from his disdain at watching the rich get richer. And if the violence ravaging Iraq has found its way across the border, Moussa said, he can only blame his government. "They don't care about the people," he said, waving his hand in a dismissive gesture at a banner of the king flying near an intersection.

Waleed Khatib, director of the Irbid office of the Islamic Action Front, a coalition of political parties in Jordan, said he did not sense any sympathy among Muslims in Jordan for those who target civilians. "We sympathize with any group if it's legitimate resistance against the enemy, if it's in the name of God," he said.

Khatib said he supported groups that "fight against the occupation in Iraq. I sympathize with it. But targeting civilians, we are against it."

The complexity of the issue is evident in the tale of Mohammad Hikmet and his friend Talal Badran. The last time Hikmet saw his friend they had stood up with several other foreign fighters "as one man," facing down American troops at the Baghdad airport in April 2003. By his account, which could not be verified independently, Hikmet took off running toward a building, as the men had planned. He did not look back, and he never saw his friend again.

Badran's older brother, named Adnan Badran, speaking in Irbid, said he presumed Talal was dead. Adnan said Talal, bedeviled by drugs and alcohol, went to Iraq to make himself right with God, a decision Adnan supported and kept from relatives until Talal left with money borrowed from him.

"He will be a martyr if he fought for the sake of God," Adnan Badran said. "But if I know he is bombing against civilians in Amman or Iraq, I will accept him only as a criminal. He will be outside . . . Islam."

Hikmet, who returned to Jordan after spending a few weeks in Iraq, said he was shocked by the bombings in Amman.

"I can't believe it," he said in a coffee shop in Irbid. "As long as you are Muslim and young and you know the true face of Islam, why would you bomb people who are innocent? Even if they are from different religions, different areas, why would we kill them?"

Asked if he would go back to Iraq to fight if he could, Hikmet nodded his head. "Yes, of course," he said.

Special correspondent Yasmine Mousa contributed to this report.