"The true Samaritans"
Jordan has a population of just 6 million people. Yet, they’ve already taken in 1.5 million refugees as part of the mass exodus of people fleeing their war-torn homes across the middle east.
Despite the massive influx of people, there appear to be no riots or protests to what is now an overwhelming humanitarian effort. Steffen Huck writes:
It is a near-miracle that the situation has not led to riots, or protests at the very least. It is also a miracle that this very fact has drawn little attention from the Western public. Not that the West is ignoring the region itself, but reports are dominated by the horrors of Islamist terrorism. Whenever pillars fall, world heritage sites are destroyed, and another bestial murder is committed by “Daesh” (otherwise known as ISIS, or ISIL or IS), everyone’s eyes are on the Arabian Peninsula.
This focus on bad news leads to a sadly distorted picture of the Arab region and its dominant religion, which causes all 1.6 billion followers of Islam worldwide to suffer. Hardly any of our Arab friends in Jordan are without a specific story to contribute in this respect: they get evil looks from fellow flyers at the airport gate, are grilled by border control officials, and on entry to Israel they even have to take off the baby’s nappy so the guards can make sure there are no explosives hidden inside.