It was hyped first as the opening salvo of Jordan's Arab Spring, then derided for failing to flex much of an opposition muscle. What is certain: on Friday, the Muslim Brotherhood's political arm, the Islamic Action Front (IAF), was able to gather tens of thousands of people in downtown Amman to call for a boycott of upcoming legislative elections, constituting the most serious challenge to King Abdullah's agenda in 22 months of weekly protests throughout the country.

Determining the weight of the show of discontent is a trickier matter. The gathering followed a peculiarly Jordanian etiquette: a potentially destabilizing loyalist counterprotest was suspended at the last minute, while protest organizers exercised careful message control over their chants, which prodded the king for constitutional reform rather than revolution. Borrowing the Syrian sing-song chant of “Get out, Bashar,” which cursed the president and called his brother a traitor, Jordan's protesters substituted more polite lyrics calling for King Abdullah to respond to their requests for changes to the elections law.

As Amman set about assessing the impact of the show of force, coffee shops buzzed with debates over protest's size. Since the IAF had predicted that 50,000 people would take part, the figure became an easy barometer for judging the  Brotherhood's command of the street. Most analysts agreed that they did not quite hit their mark, though estimates ranged wildly, from 7,000 to 70,000. 

But the question of who, not just how many, was chanting those slogans is just as important in assessing the protest movement's trajectory. While official media slapped an Islamist label on the rally, the composition of the crowd was more dynamic. Participants joined from more than 80 other groups, including many of the street movements, or “hirak,” that have cropped up outside the capital in the past two years as traditional patronage networks have failed to keep up with a changing economic environment.