AMMAN, Jordan — The Jordanian authorities arrested on Nov. 20 the local Muslim Brotherhood deputy leader Zaki Bani Arshid over a Facebook post in which he had attacked the United Arab Emirates' (UAE) decision to list his organization as a terrorist group. He is due to appear before the State Security Court for "disrupting relations with a foreign state," a terror charge according to the Anti-Terrorism Law.

In Jordan, like any other recipient of Gulf aid, a wide spectrum of political Islam followers are increasingly watched by authorities. The Muslim Brotherhood cautions about the rise of jihadists on the ashes of their criminalization, whereas the secular parties call for the reduction of the Islamist influence on education to counter extremism. Despite foreign pressures, the Brotherhood is not considered a terrorist organization in Jordan, and the kingdom is not likely to jeopardize its longstanding tacit alliance with the movement.

Like other opposition forces, the Muslim Brotherhood rejects the limits imposed on freedom of expression under the Anti-Terrorism Law, but it also underlines how double standards allegedly impinge on the charge of disrupting foreign relations, depending on what regional power is involved.

Hamza Mansur, a leading Muslim Brotherhood member and former secretary-general of the Islamic Action Front, told Al-Monitor, "There are double standards: The case of a Brotherhood member who criticized the UAE policies is referred to the State Security Court, while a well-known Jordanian journalist [Fahd al-Khitan] is allowed to describe a respectable figure like [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan as 'suffering from delusions of grandeur,' even though he won fair democratic elections in a country like Turkey tied to us by economic interests."