Ariel 'Foreign Bureau'

By Jon Leyne, Correspondent, Amman, 1 March 2005

If you’re lucky, you sleep through the call to prayer. But it’s a challenge.

My home and office is under the shadow of a mosque. From here the muezzin calls much of the city to prayer. And I could swear the loudspeaker is targeted at the BBC.

That means, in the summer, a 4.10am wake-up call, then four more calls during the day. On the holiest night of Ramadan – the 27th of that holy month – the prayers continue through the night, broadcast on those loudspeakers of course.

Then there are the churches nearby, where the devotions begin at 7am on a weekend morning. It’s all very different from the Jordan seen by visitors, as they spend a night in the cosseted calm of the Intercontinental Hotel or the Four Seasons.

As far as people in Britain have any perception of Jordan, they probably see it as one of the ‘good’ countries in the Middle East. Indeed, from the way King Abdullah is received with plaudits in London and Washington, you would think Jordan is a liberal democracy.

Watchful gaze

Well, not quite. This is a very conservative, intensely religious country. Just watch how the streets empty, at the end of the daily Ramadan fast, as everyone rushes home for the iftar meal. And political freedoms are tightly circumscribed as well.

Preparing a feature on Islam and terrorism, I asked to visit the mosque beside the office in order to record Friday prayers and interview an Imam.

I was quickly referred to the government’s ministry of religion. I ended up interviewing a government approved Imam in the office – under the watchful gaze of the minister of religion.

Another example. It’s illegal in Jordan to slander any Arab or friendly country. And it’s no archaic law absent-mindedly left on the statute book. A newspaper writer was actually locked up for a while recently for criticising the Saudi royal family.

Whether or not I have fallen foul of that law I do not know. But I have certainly managed to offend Jordanian sensitivities.

Turmoil of change

For a recent feature about democracy in the Arab world, or the lack of it, I wrote about the political system in Jordan.

Unlike some Arab countries, Jordan has a parliament some of whose members are democratically elected. But I described how the king still enjoyed substantial powers. To be frank, basically he still runs the show.

A short time later there was an opinion article in the government owned paper, Al Rai, condemning me. The author insisted Jordan was a constitutional monarchy just like Britain.

Why had I attacked an ally which had stood so loyally behind Britain during the second world war? My article, said the writer, would bring disrepute on the whole BBC.

Jordan’s good fortune is that there are few if any daily stories to report. The violence to the east, south and west has not spread here – yet.

That despite the fact that the vast majority of Jordanians are Sunni Muslims, with strong ties to their fellow Sunnis in Iraq, and a large number of Jordanians are also of Palestinian origin.

So, unlike my previous posting in Washington DC, there is not a steady supply of hot and cold running stories. The journalism here is harder work, often more rewarding, almost always more frustrating.

But it’s a great vantage point from which to examine a region in the turmoil of change.

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