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Jordan Religious Minorities
Jordan's Constitution guarantees freedom of religious beliefs.
Christians formed the largest non-Muslim minority. Observers
estimated in the late 1970s that the Christian community--
comprising groups of several denominations--constituted roughly 5
to 8 percent of the population. The principal points of
concentration of the East Bank's indigenous Christians were a
number of small towns in the "sown," such as Al Karak, Madaba, As
Salt, and Ajlun
(see
fig. 1). Christians also lived in Amman and
other major cities.
Overwhelmingly Arabic in language and culture, many Christians
belonged to churches whose liturgical languages were, until
recently, other than Arabic. With some exceptions, the lower clergy
were Arabs, but the higher clergy were rarely so. In the past,
Christians were disproportionately represented among the educated
and prosperous. With increased access to education for all of the
East Bank's peoples, it is the disproportion was less significant
in the 1980s.
As of 1989, religious conflict had not been a problem in
Jordan. The influence of Islamic fundamentalism that made itself
felt in Jordan in the late 1970s and 1980s had not given rise to
religious tensions. As a minority in a largely Muslim society,
however, Christians were affected by Islamic practices. With the
stricter observance of Ramadan in the 1980s, hotels and restaurants
were prohibited by the government from serving liquor to local
Christians or foreigners. Restaurants that formerly had remained
open during the day to serve such persons were closed. The press
and television also gave a greater emphasis to religion.
The largest of the Christian sects in the late 1980s,
accounting for roughly half of all Jordanian Christians, was that
part of the Eastern Orthodox complex of churches that falls under
the patriarch of Jerusalem. With an elaborately organized clerical
hierarchy, the patriarchate administered most of the Christian
shrines in Jerusalem and the West Bank. The parent church of
Eastern Orthodoxy was the Greek Orthodox Church, and the liturgical
language of the church in the patriarchate of Jerusalem included
both Greek and Arabic. The higher clergy, including the patriarch,
were predominantly of Greek descent, but the priests were native
speakers of Arabic. Because of the typically national organization
of orthodox churches, the relatively small numbers of Syrians and
Armenians adhering to orthodoxy had their own churches.
The Greek Catholic Church (Melchite, also seen as Melkite;
Catholics of the Byzantine rite) in Jordan was headed by the
patriarch of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria, who in turn was
subject to the authority of the pope in Rome. The clergy generally
were Arabs, and Arabic was used in most of the liturgy. Most Greek
Catholics lived in the West Bank, but one diocese--that of PetraPhiladelphia , the latter an old Greek name for Amman--had its seat
in Amman.
The Roman Catholic Church had its own patriarch, who was also
subject to papal authority. Several other Catholic groups, each
headed by a patriarch who was in turn subordinate to Rome, were
represented. These included several hundred Syrian Catholics and
Armenian Catholics.
The approximately 11,000 members of various Protestant
denominations had been converted primarily from the Orthodox and
Catholic churches. Muslims rarely converted to another faith. In
the rural areas, conversions from one Christian group to another
usually involved an entire kin-based group of some size. Such
conversions often caused stress between the converting group and
another group of which it was part or with which it was allied.
Individual conversions in such areas were rare. The effect of
urbanization on this pattern has not been examined.
Protestant communities, generally established by North American
and European missionary activities, also were represented by the
personnel of various international organizations. Some Protestant
groups established schools and hospitals and constructed a few
churches. The Christian churches also had their own ecclesiastical
courts that decided matters of alimony, divorce, annulment, and
inheritance.
Non-Christian religious minorities in the late 1980s included
a small community of Druzes who lived in an area near the Syrian
border. They were members of a sect that originally had derived
from the Ismaili branch of Shia Islam. Ismailis were Shias who
believed that Imam Muhammad ibn Ismail (died ca. A.D. 765), the
Seventh Imam, was the last Imam, as opposed to others who
recognized Twelve Imams. The Druzes, primarily located in the
mountains of Lebanon and in southwestern Syria, have many secret
beliefs and maintain that Hakim, the sixth Fatimid caliph, was
divine in nature and is still alive in hiding. A small settlement
of Bahais inhabited the village of Al Adasiyah in the northern
Jordan Valley. The Shishans, a group whose origins lie in the
Caucasus Mountains, were Shias. Estimates in the early 1980s placed
the number of Shishans at 2,000.
Data as of December 1989
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