The newly elected leader of Jordan’s largest political party, the Islamic Action Front, said yesterday he considered it a “natural right” for the country’s mainstream Islamists to form a government if they clinch a majority in next year’s general elections. “It will be a natural right for Islamists to form a government in Jordan if they obtain a majority at the forthcoming elections,” Zaki Bani Rshaid told Deutsche Presse-Agentur in an interview.He said the IAF would not reckon on traditional US opposition to the rise of Islamic administrations in the region that gathered momentum after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. “The United States cannot dictate the destiny of the Arab and Islamic worlds. It is rather decided by the peoples’ will,” he said.
Bani Rshaid, a moderate, was elected earlier this week by the IAF Shoura (Consultative) Council as new secretary-general of the party. He succeeded Hamzeh Mansour, who held the post for the past four years. The IAF is the political arm of the Islamic Brotherhood Movement, which also elected Salem Falahat as new leader at the outset of this month to succeed Abdul Majeed Thuneibat.
In the opinion of several commentators, Bani Rshaid and Falahat represented a new centrist generation of Islamic leaders who stepped in after the old hawkish guard of the countryÂ’s mainstream Islamic entity opted to lay down their arms or suffered defeat at the elections of the Shoura Council, the movementÂ’s highest decision-making body.