A remarkable story has been the centre of a heated and intense discussion on Jordanian blogs the last week or so. Halfway through Ramadan one of the more popular cafes and restaurants “Books@Cafe” was closed down. It is not totally clear whether the reason for the closure was food safety the fact that the restaurant was selling alcohol during Ramadan. Some bloggers suggest that this is more a political than a religious matter and that “values” tends to play a still more important role in Jordanian society. Others, that it is a mere question of corruption. It seems that the Books@Cafe incident was not an isolated incident, according to both bloggers and Café-owners.
This story has led a much bigger than normal number of Jordanian bloggers and readers to participate – some rather emotionally – in the debate, so it has somehow struck a chord within the community. But with all due respect it has also been a rather elitist debate. Until today – strangely enough – written press has not picked on the subject. But that seems to change. Today Jordan Times made the story hit the Front page and on the op-ed page Nermeen Murad wrote a very articulate opinion on the issue. It will be interesting to see if the articles in JT make the Arabic speaking press pick up on this, so the debate can be broadened out to all groups in the society.
As you will see from the articles and the blogs this case is not a simple one and it deserves to be debated outside the blogosphere. It is also for the time being mostly a one sided discussion where we only know the arguments from those that have been hit by restrictions. That makes it hard to judge on what really took place and for what reason.
So for the time being my take will be a little bit simplistic and bearing in mind the different cultures and norms that is distinctive to each and every country. First of all, Jordan is considered a rule-of-law society which implies transparency, accountability, justice and equality in front of the Law. There is a very distinctive difference between a rule-of-law society and a society ruled with law. Second, if the situation is as described by the bloggers why are the measures introduced (or enforced) this year and not last year or the year before? What has changed?
For the broader discussion visit the citizens journalism site.
For other bloggers take at the story visit The Arab Observer, The Black Iris, Ali’s blog or Global Voices online. UPDATE: For statements from the Jordan Restaurant Association read this.
September 22, 2008 at 12:22
Wow! I loved the artice by Nermeen Murad. Thank you for pointing to it.
September 22, 2008 at 13:02
If it hits the arabic written media, the issue will become a confrontation with the society rather than with a governmental entity, and as I said before and will keep saying: When you know what hits the fan in the form of economic an political less-than-impressive “achievments” the government becomes the enforcer of “morality”. You see, they can’t challenge the status quo on all fronts-especially when the change is coming from the top, and with all the talk about corruption, the hard pinch with the soaring prices,and the lack of freedoms they can’t leave the relegious and moral card for someone else to use.
And finally, something that just came to my mind: We all read about the meetings between the islamic movement in jordan with the intelligence department, does this have anything to do with those meetings? Was there any kind of negotiation? The funny thing is that the islamic movement is on the sidelines when it comes to the discussion of the corruption and privatization, they are not even speaking out on many national issues.. I don’t know, but, well, we will see.
September 22, 2008 at 14:23
This story became remarkable because Madian, Books@Cafe leader, spoke up. Boldly, accurately, passionately. He made it matter rather than accept being bullied by a system that decided not to honor its own rules. His voice is what rallied the support and diverse voices of the Books@Cafe community. For anything to change or even truly move an inch, a leader with unrelenting charge is needed.
In addition to the questions above, perhaps we ought to ask: Do we want to continue getting seasonally frantic because the business of fear is in charge yanking us around aimlessly, or do we want to have a soulful conversation, define our vision, and put some faith, passion and lots of hard work into the road forward?
September 22, 2008 at 15:57
How naive can some people be. Alcohol in Ramadan is a no no, unless you happen to be a 5 star hotel. Even then, consumption is indoors and preferably out of site. No permit or license will protect any Jordanian owned establishment that allows alcohol to be consumed on its premises during Ramadan. You may be educated and enlightened, but your basic Gov’t employee is still living in the 19th century, and that is not going to change anytime soon, if ever.
September 23, 2008 at 09:02
Nice lay out Mr. Ambassador, and thanks for linking to my post on Global Voices. We actually met twice, once at the Jordanian-Danish Youth Dialogue Centre, which I helped founding, and the second was at an embassay-sponsored event at Masrah Al Balad, where brilliant young people from Denmark of various backgrounds presented the dilemma of integration in Denmark in a very creative way.
The issue in hand here is indeed divisive. I cannot seem to comprehend why both religious and non-reliogious people care too much about what people on the otherside do during holidays like Ramadan, why can’t they just live, coexist, and accept other people’s point of view, why do we need to pick on each other like that?. Anyhow, time will only tell how Jordan will handle this matter.
December 2, 2009 at 17:38
Thank you,
very interesting article