Jordan: Contemporary Affairs

Following his father’s death in 1999, King Abdullah II assumed the throne and has since instituted programs to increase interreligious dialogue. The Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies, a government sponsored program, has organized several conferences and seminars dedicated to creating a forum in the Arab world for the interdisciplinary study and discussion of religious issues. However, Jordan continues to regulate religion, and some aspects of its family laws are biased against non-Muslims. The balance between Jordan’s secular and religious identity remains a contentious issue. In January 2006, two Jordanian journalists were arrested for printing controversial cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. Jordan’s relations with Israel and Palestinians are also sources of political contention, with non-Palestinian Jordanians seeking to curb the influence of Palestinian Jordanians in order to avoid involvement in that conflict. The Muslim Brotherhood’s Islamic Action Front (IAF) remains the most powerful organized political opposition, and Salafi movements pose a smaller but more intransigent challenge. In 2009, the Jordanian cabinet recognized the Council of Church Leaders as the official organizational representative to coordinate Jordanian Christians’ civil affairs with the government. Opposition to the regime has also increased as part of the broader Arab Spring, and the IAF, among others, led a series of popular protests in 2011 calling for democratic reforms. These protests, fueled in large part by economic woes, led the king to twice replace the country’s prime minister. Though the opposition continued to enjoy heightened popular support and political influence into 2012, large-scale protests fizzled by December 2011.