AMMAN: A preacher who posted an online video criticizing Jordan’s participation in the coalition battling the Daesh group in Iraq and Syria was arrested on Tuesday, a judicial source said.
The source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the state security court placed Amjad Qursha in preventative detention for 15 days after the video was posted on YouTube.
In it, Qursha “criticized Jordan’s participation in the international coalition against the terrorist Daesh organization in Iraq and Syria,” the source said.
The 49-year-old preacher is accused of “having committed unauthorized acts... that could affect the kingdom’s relations with a friendly country,” a reference to the United States which heads the anti-Daesh coalition.
In the video, Qursha says Washington “compelled” Amman to join the coalition. “Unfortunately, our feeble and fragile government has led us into a war that has nothing to do with us,” he says. The married father of five lectures at the University of Jordan’s Shariah faculty.
He is known as a moderate who appears frequently in discussions on official radio and television channels.
In mid-May Eyad Qunaibi, another preacher who was imprisoned for nearly a year for inciting hatred against the regime on social media, was freed following criticism from rights campaigners.
The 40-year-old Kuwaiti-born Jordanian criticized Jordan’s relations with Israel and the “Westernization” of Jordanian society.
Last year the Muslim Brotherhood’s second-in-command in Jordan Zaki Bani Rsheid was sentenced to 18 months in prison.
Jordanian preacher held over YouTube video
Jordanian preacher held over YouTube video
Israeli settlers burn tents, vehicles in West Bank village
- Videos show masked men rampaging into the Palestinian village of Susiya near Hebron and burning vehicles and property
- Similar attacks have become common as settlers seek to control large swathes of land in the West Bank
SUSIYA, West Bank: Israeli settlers set fire to vehicles and tents in the Palestinian village of Susiya on Tuesday night, residents said, in the latest incident of settler violence against Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Videos verified by Reuters showed a masked group of men, who residents said were Israeli settlers, approaching the village near the city of Hebron, and later burning vehicles and Palestinian property.
“They attack us almost every day, repeatedly, because we live near the main road...Last night they burned everywhere,” Halima Abu Eid, a Susiya resident told Reuters on Wednesday.
The Israeli military said they had dispatched soldiers to deal with reports of “deliberate burnings of Palestinian property” and had opened an investigation into the incident.
Violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank has increased sharply since the beginning of the war in Gaza in October 2023, with over 800 Palestinians displaced due to settler attacks in 2026 according to United Nations data.
Attacks where masked settlers arrive at night to destroy Palestinian property or attack residents have become common, as Israeli settlers seek to control large swathes of land in the West Bank.
An Israeli official previously blamed settler violence on a “fringe minority,” although Reuters reporting has shown well-organized plans to take Palestinian land in public settler social media channels.
The United Nations has documented at least 86 instances of settler violence from February 3 to 16, leading to the displacement of 146 Palestinians and the injury of 64.
Israeli indictments of settler violence are rare. At the end of 2025, Israeli monitoring group Yesh Din said of the hundreds of cases of settler violence it had documented since October 7, 2023, only 2 percent resulted in indictments. Israel’s far-right governing coalition has enabled the rapid spread of settlements, with some ministers openly stating they want to “bury” a Palestinian state.
Most world powers deem Israel’s settlements, on land it captured in a 1967 war, illegal, and numerous UN Security Council resolutions have called on Israel to halt all settlement activity.
Israel disputes the view that its settlements are unlawful and it cites biblical and historical ties to the land.
