FIDA ADELY Georgetown University “God made beautiful things” · FIDA ADELY Georgetown University “God made beautiful things”: Proper faith and religious authority in a Jordanian

FIDA ADELYGeorgetown University

“God made beautiful things”:Proper faith and religious authority in a Jordanian highschool

A B S T R A C TOutside the formal and intended curriculum inJordanian schools, the efforts of students andinstructors to teach about religion and living piouslyas Muslim women span a myriad of spaces andapproaches. At the al-Khatwa Secondary School forGirls, tensions surrounding religious authority wereenmeshed with struggles outside school, specificallywith a local piety movement and with a politics ofauthenticity that has women at its center.Competing interpretations of Islamic orthodoxy, andcontests for moral authority, come to the fore inschools in unique ways, and schools provide a spaceand tools for young women to negotiate thesetensions. [women, education, Islam, schools, Jordan,religion]

“Orthodoxy” is not easy to secure in conditions of radical change. Thisis not because orthodox discourse is necessarily against any change butbecause it aspires to be authoritative.

—Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion

Attempts I observed to educate students and adults about reli-gion at the al-Khatwa Secondary School for Girls in Bawadi al-Naseem, Jordan, were both explicit and implied in everyday lifeand interactions in the school.1 All schools in Jordan require for-mal religious instruction; however, I found that, in the space and

social life of educational institutions, religious instruction could be quiteinformal. A lab teacher might ask a colleague about purification rituals be-fore praying. A student might admonish her friend for gossiping, on reli-gious grounds. The principal might ask the members of the school com-munity to fulfill their obligation to do zakat, or charity, by helping to paythe high-school-completion exam fees of some of the poorer students. Al-though discussions about morality and what was believed to be good or de-sirable behavior stemmed from varied notions of respectability, honor, andprogress, here I take up the very explicit efforts of students and teachers atthe al-Khatwa School to define what is Islamic and, more specifically, whatappropriate Islamic behavior is for young women. Understanding these ef-forts is critical to providing a broader view of the struggles surrounding re-ligious authority within contemporary Jordanian society and the participa-tion of women in these efforts.

In his now widely cited reflections on the anthropology of Islam, TalalAsad argues for a conceptualization of religious orthodoxy as a “distinc-tive relationship—a relationship of power” (1986:15). He describes a pro-cess whereby those who claim the authority to define orthodoxy in Is-lam undertake a “(re)-ordering of knowledge that governs the ‘correct’form of Islamic practices” to achieve “discursive coherence” and domi-nance (Asad 1993:210). Such efforts are no longer the exclusive purviewof Islamic scholars, as expanded literacy and educational institutions

AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Vol. 39, No. 2, pp. 297–312, ISSN 0094-0496, onlineISSN 1548-1425. C© 2012 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved.DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1425.2012.01365.x

American Ethnologist � Volume 39 Number 2 May 2012

have produced new authorities and a plethora of sources ofreligious knowledge (Eickelman 1992; Starrett 1998). Pub-lic schools—state pedagogical institutions—throughout theMiddle East are officially charged with the task of defin-ing correct practice and asserting dominance. However, at-tempts to achieve “discursive coherence” are not limited toofficial channels, even within the space of the school.

Teaching about Islam in schools goes beyond the offi-cial curriculum and entails a set of daily practices, school-based activities, and day-to-day interactions that createspaces for religious discussion, debate, and instruction.In Bawadi al-Naseem, even extracurricular activities andevents designed to instill patriotism and “teach” citizenshipwere the subjects of religious “lessons,” as they at timeshighlighted debates about modesty and proper comport-ment for a Muslim woman (Adely 2007, 2010). Furthermore,debates about “true” Islamic teaching and what should betaught about Islam were enmeshed with similar strugglesoutside school, more specifically, with a local da‘wa, or“piety,” movement that made its way into school. Finally,schooling—a project of state development embedded inglobal educational narratives—creates new models and ex-pectations for living as an “educated” person that cannot bedivorced from debates about religion and proper forms ofpiety, particularly for young women. Girls at the al-KhatwaSchool were very much at the center of such polemics.

At the al-Khatwa School, which enrolled nearly 600 girlsfrom Bawadi al-Naseem and its surrounding villages,2 thesedebates came to life in the directives of Miss Suheil, the re-ligion teacher, who, as the official religion expert, worked toestablish authority by regularly critiquing what she viewedto be outside the bounds of true Islam, whether the extrem-ism of local da‘wa groups and the conservatism of local tra-dition or the “other type of extremism,” characterized forMiss Suheil by immoral satellite television programs andideas of “feminists” that exceeded the bounds of the reli-giously acceptable. These deliberations were also embod-ied in the preaching of Amina, an 11th grader who regu-larly lectured her peers, drawing on the influences of theda‘wa group in which she was active, her own independentresearch and reading on Islam, and the religious programson television that she argued preached the true Islam. Text-books, like television preachers and “immoral” satellite pro-grams, also provided important substance for such argu-ments, but they only provided a limited view of the contoursof religious education in schools. Drawing on ethnographicresearch in Bawadi al-Naseem,3 I argue here that schoolscan create a space for moral deliberations that at timesrender the dominant discourse incoherent or, at the least,sufficiently ambiguous to enable broader participation—beyond that of state officials, legal scholars, and traditionalreligious leaders—in the struggle for moral authority.4

Attempts to secure orthodoxy were apparent in ev-eryday contests at school dealing with an array of prac-

tices and beliefs, from proper comportment to forms ofdress, the mixing of the sexes, and educational attainment.Struggles to authorize the religiously acceptable and desir-able involved various actors—teachers, students, and localpreachers (male and female) as well as religious “experts”accessible through multiple media. The extent of their par-ticipation was shaped by age and gender, at times in un-expected ways. Thus, for example, those with seeminglyless authority, namely, female students, were permitted tochallenge teachings of both school faculty and the state.However, the outer limits of these deliberations were con-strained, and those who exceeded them by moving outsidethe broader dominant religious paradigm were punished.Securing orthodoxy was an ongoing effort.

Background

Competing projects to define religious orthodoxy charac-terize religious discourse and practice in Jordan today. Areligious revival in the region has spanned nearly threedecades, and the power to define and monitor religiousknowledge has been at the center of struggles between thestate, various Islamic groups, and citizens who seek to liveas good Muslims. Official efforts to control religious dis-course and define what is religiously legitimate, allowable,and “true” have been key to constructing political legit-imacy. Since Jordan’s founding, the governing Hashemiteregime has based its authority to some measure on its Is-lamic credentials, and this identification continues to beat the core of the Hashemite legitimacy narrative and na-tionalist discourse. To this end, the Hashemites have em-phasized their special status as descendants of the prophetMuhammad as well as the role they assumed as protec-tors of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem (Anderson 2001; Katz2005; Layne 1994). However, this special status representsonly one dimension of the regime’s larger efforts to controlreligious discourse and practice. More recently, the regimehas sought to promote a particular vision of a moderate Is-lam in Jordan (and in the region) by sponsoring conferencesfor religious scholars, by emphasizing its vision in publicspeeches and policy statements, and by seeking to furthercontrol the production and transmission of religious knowl-edge. For example, in November 2004, during the month ofRamadan (the Muslim holy month of fasting), King Abdul-lah II delivered the “Amman Message,” an official religiousplatform for the regime, which emphasizes that Islam is areligion of moderation, peace, and progress:

In this declaration we speak frankly to the [Islamic]nation, at this difficult juncture in its history, regard-ing the perils that beset it. We are aware of the chal-lenges confronting the nation, threatening its iden-tity, assailing its tenets . . . and working to distort itsreligion . . . Today the magnanimous message of Islam

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Religious authority in a Jordanian high school � American Ethnologist

faces a vicious attack from those who through distor-tion and fabrication try to portray Islam as an enemy tothem. It is also under attack from some who claim af-filiation with Islam and commit irresponsible acts in itsname. [Official Website of the Amman Message 2007]

After the public announcement of the “Amman Message,”the regime launched an initiative, ongoing today, under theframework of this message, in which it aims to take lead-ership in authoring and delimiting legitimate religious dis-course in all its dimensions in Jordan and the broader re-gion. In Jordan, as in many other states, proper educa-tion is considered critical to preventing religious extrem-ism among young people. To this end, the regime has alsosought to closely control religious public spaces, religiousteaching, and preaching in mosques and in Islamic centers(Antoun 2006; Wiktorowicz 2001).

As in much of the region, the religious revival in Jordanhas manifested itself in the explicitly political projects of Is-lamic groups and political parties, most prominently, theMuslim Brotherhood and its political arm, the Islamic Ac-tion Front, or IAF,5 as well as a plethora of contemporary so-cial and pedagogical institutions with religious mandates.6

With these developments, Jordan has witnessed the emer-gence of new forms of religiosity and displays of piety aswell as a modern religious discourse shaped by contempo-rary political and social developments, among them, edu-cation and literacy. Jordanians have access to a variety of Is-lamic centers of education throughout the country wherethey can go to learn about Islam, Islamic teachings, andliving their lives as good Muslims. These institutions in-clude formally registered ones under the auspices of theMinistry of Awqaf and Religious Affairs as well as privatecenters.7 The Muslim Brotherhood has also been active inproviding its own private religious education through a net-work of Islamic centers under its umbrella.8 Many of theyoung women at al-Khatwa attended some form of reli-gious education outside school, particularly for instructionin Qur’anic recitation. For the school-aged population, suchcenters can supplement the religious education received inschool and at home, as is the case in other countries (Boyle2006). Perhaps one of the most underexplored avenues ofthe regime’s efforts to control religious discourse is masspublic schooling, which acts as the primary purveyor of astate discourse of religious authenticity.

Despite an expansive literature that has sought to un-derstand contemporary Islamic movements, political andotherwise, very little attention has been focused on howIslam is taught in public schools. The literature that ad-dresses state schooling and religion in the Arab world hasfocused largely on textbooks and curriculum (e.g., Starrettand Doumato 2007).9 Research about state efforts to con-trol or shape Islamic discourse has typically focused onthe sphere of the mosque and the media, Islamic law, and

state efforts to monitor and control preachers or imams.One important exception has been the historical analysisof “traditional” Islamic schooling in kuttabs and madrasasand the transformation of such institutions as a result ofcolonization, nation building, and modernizing reforms(e.g., Berkey 2007; Eickelman 1985; Gesink 2006; Mitchell1988; Mottahedeh 2000; Wagner 1993). More recently, abody of work has emerged about contemporary forms of Is-lamic education in private Islamic schools (e.g., Hefner andZaman 2006; Herrera 2000, 2006) as well as state attemptsto control educational institutions (often state run) whoseexpress mission is the training of religious scholars and bu-reaucrats (Pak 2004; Zeghal 2007, 2010). Finally, a growingbody of literature examines the participation of adults, es-pecially women, in piety movements and their attendantreligious study circles (Deeb 2006; Limbert 2005; Mahmood2005; Shively 2008). The space of the public school, how-ever, has been left largely unexplored.

Among the many contexts for learning about Islam inJordan, schools are critical spaces for examining the ef-forts to secure orthodoxy (Asad 1993). The majority of Jor-danian students attend public schools; about 30 percentattend a variety of private institutions or United NationsRelief and Works Agency (UNRWA) schools for Palestinianrefugees (Jordan Ministry of Education 2011).10 Textbooks,which are synonymous with curriculum in this context, arethe most palpable tools in this endeavor, presenting “offi-cial wish-images” about proper faith and religious practice(Limbert 2007:121). In Jordanian state schools and most pri-vate schools, religion is a formal subject that all Muslim stu-dents must take from first grade until 12th grade.11 In highschool, as of 2005, all students took at least three periods ofreligion a week, and students in the literary or humanitiestrack took additional periods in the 11th and 12th grades.12

The religion class is more specifically an Islamic religionclass, and so members of Jordan’s Christian minority (3 to5 percent of the population) are exempted from this sub-ject throughout their years in the public school system.13

The form and content of the religious curriculum vary fromyear to year and for the different academic tracks after thetenth grade, although one finds a significant amount of rep-etition and revisiting of particular themes and topics withinand across textbooks.14

Topics covered in these textbooks range from the more“technical” matters of religious doctrine, specifically themethods and principles of jurisprudence, or fiqh, andQur’anic interpretation (e.g., Sawa et al. 2001), to lessonsabout the implications of religious teaching for a range ofday-to-day matters, such as marriage and family life, work,economic systems, and professional unions.15 Although allthe textbooks make religious references, the relationshipbetween religious doctrine (in the form of verses from theQur’an, or hadith, which are verified reports of the Prophet’sdeeds and words) and many of these day-to-day matters is

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less direct. This is most evident in Islamic Education, the11th-grade text, which deals with a range of contemporarytopics outside the specific purview of Islamic teaching, suchas a discussion about unions in the chapter on Islam andlabor (Dughmi et al. 1996:203).16 Even when the authors ofsuch texts do not draw on particular religious teachings toverify or contextualize a particular topic, they frame lessonsin the textbook such that they read as the definitive Islamicteaching on the topic, so as to establish “textual authority”(Anderson 2007; Messick 1993).

Yet textbooks provide a limited view of what transpiresin schools. It is misleading even to speak of a singular statevision for religious education, because state bureaucrats(some of whom are directly involved in developing cur-riculum) hold divergent perspectives on the shape that Is-lam should take in public education, and this miscellanyis reflected in part through inconsistencies in the officialnarratives and in the broader curriculum. In addition tothe formal and intended curriculum, I observed myriadways and spaces—in the classroom, prayer room, school-yard, and teachers’ room—within which actors attemptedto teach others about religion, religious practices, and pi-ous living. I draw on observations of religion classes andlimited references to the curriculum to show how course-work provides a foundation for discussion in religious stud-ies, one that is, in turn, shaped by students and teachers.Most importantly, such deliberations were not limited toreligion class, as teachers and students worked to conveytheir vision of true Islam in many other contexts in theschool. Their efforts were not equal in the power they com-manded; however, they all represent significant dimensionsof this account, both because they aspired to be authorita-tive and because they are indicative as well as constitutiveof the struggles surrounding proper faith in Jordan today.As the school’s official authorities of knowledge, teachers,in particular, were central to the debates about being a goodMuslim in school.

Miss Suheil’s distinction

Teachers, both educators and civil servants, are at the fore-front of state educational efforts. As representatives of thestate, they are charged with implementing state curriculargoals, but in many respects they are the farthest removedfrom the centers of power in the Ministry of Education.They act as mediators of the state textbook in schools andare the main arbiters of what can and cannot be said inthe classroom. Miss Suheil, a religion teacher at al-Khatwa,was one of the most popular teachers among students andregularly engaged them in discussions about Islam in theirlives. Her distinction as a classroom teacher also stemmedfrom her pedagogical techniques. She employed teachingmethods typically associated with “progressive” pedagogi-cal practice, including small-group exercises, role-playing,

and skits, using methods that were uncommon in most Jor-danian public schools and rare at al-Khatwa.17 Studentsfound Miss Suheil’s exercises enjoyable and her classes in-teresting, but the opinions of her colleagues were not al-ways as generous. Some teachers found her presumptuousand felt as if her extra efforts in the classroom were meantto paint their own practice in a less than positive light; MissSuheil’s research and writing on proper pedagogy only am-plified such sentiments, as some colleagues seemed threat-ened by her pedagogical authority.

Miss Suheil’s role in the classroom was critical bothbecause she was the arbiter of the curricular content pre-sented in the text and because she aspired to be authori-tative. She explicitly engaged with struggles over religiousauthority in her own community, juxtaposing what she be-lieved to be true Islam with what she viewed as illegitimate.Indeed, she viewed the work of illuminating proper reli-gious teaching as central to her mission as a teacher andgood Muslim. Miss Suheil frequently launched into socialcritique of Jordan and the Arab world more broadly. Shefound much to be lacking in the education system, criticiz-ing teaching methods and the particular types of knowledgevalued in Jordan. Given her lifelong commitment to edu-cation and improving her own pedagogy, these issues wereof particular concern to her. Miss Suheil frequently wroteabout teaching methods and theories and regularly soughtout new materials on teaching; she was also pursuing a sec-ond graduate degree in education.18 Moreover, her preoccu-pation with improving her practice was closely linked to herreligious commitments; she promoted a “progressive ped-agogy” as a means of imparting religious knowledge. Sheconveyed the belief that employing progressive teachingmethods was indispensable for instilling confidence in theadolescent girls who were her charges and for their moraledification. For Miss Suheil pedagogy and learning properfaith were inextricably linked.

In her work to define proper faith, Miss Suheil fre-quently commented on the problem of tradition and var-ious forms of “extremism” and on the ways in whichthey denied women their rights and corrupted true Islam.Miss Suheil defined true Islam by juxtaposing it with whatit was not: Islam was not to be found in traditions thatoppressed women, or the conservative views of religiouselements in her community, or the depravity of sometelevision programs. True Islam gave women the right andresponsibility to pursue education, work outside the home,and contribute to society. True Islam enabled a woman to bea full participant in her society while remaining within thebounds of what was good and moral. For Miss Suheil, theprocess of defining the terms of religious moderation wascritical to conveying her vision of Islam to her students.

As that of an educated and pious woman, her perspec-tive was not atypical. Some of the most vocal female Is-lamists throughout the region have argued that it is the

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corruption of Islam that has denied women their rights.19

Furthermore, many women active in Islamic movementshave argued that Islam not only provides them with aframework for demanding equal rights but also requiresthat Muslim women engage in the active public work of pro-moting true Islamic teaching and building the Muslim com-munity (Deeb 2006). Miss Suheil was not involved in anyreligious organization or movement; however, being a com-mitted Muslim was central to her sense of self and purpose.She drew on the topics raised in the textbooks to launchinto broader conversations about education, progress, Is-lam, and women. All of these discussions were part andparcel of her efforts to point young women in the rightdirection and to defend her authority as teacher whenit was challenged by other voices of religious and moralauthority.

Da‘wa: The call to Islam

In the spring of 2005, I attended a lesson on da‘wa inMiss Suheil’s Islamic Culture class. Da‘wa refers to theresponsibility of individual Muslims to call others to begood Muslims, although it can also encompass calling non-Muslims to Islam.20 In the past few decades, da‘wa activi-ties have been central to the formal activities of Islamic or-ganizations, “encompass[ing] a range of practical activitiesthat were once considered outside the proper domain of theclassical meaning of the term” (Mahmood 2005:58), includ-ing activities such as establishing neighborhood mosques,social welfare organizations, Islamic education institutions,and printing presses. Saba Mahmood argues that, “whilemany of these institutional practices have historical prece-dents, they have, in the last fifty years, increasingly cometo be organized under the rubric of da‘wa” (2005:58). LaraDeeb (2006:95) charts similar processes of institutionaliz-ing piety or pious practices. She argues that such institu-tions both facilitate the performance of public piety and de-mand it. Da‘wa activities have been central to the missionof the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan as well as those ofother Islamic organizations, including the Jama‘at Tabligh,or the Islamic Missionary Society, whose explicit purposeis missionary activity within Jordan, “enjoining friends andstrangers alike to practice Islam” (Wiktorowicz 2001:136).21

At al-Khatwa the responsibility to “do da‘wa” was discussedin religion textbooks, but it was also evidenced in the myr-iad ways that actors within the school worked to call theirfellow Muslims to follow the “true” Islam. What constitutesproper faith and the form that da‘wa should take could bea matter of debate, as became evident in Miss Suheil’s classon da‘wa. The varied ways in which “doing da‘wa” unfoldedin school illuminate competing religious sentiments in Jor-dan as well as the role of schooling in the articulation ofwhat is true Islam.

The topic of da‘wa constituted a full unit in the text for11th graders, and I observed several classes during which itwas discussed. The Islamic Culture textbook discusses theduty of all Muslims to engage in da‘wa:

The Islamic calling is a responsibility to be borne byall Muslim men and women within their ability to doso and within the limits of their knowledge. Thus, theresponsibility of the great scholars is greater then theresponsibility of others and the responsibility of theruler greater than that of his followers . . . However, theresponsibility is that of all Muslims within the limitsof his or her knowledge and abilities. [Jabr et al. 2004:169–170]

Upon beginning this unit with a group of 11th graders inthe science track, Miss Suheil summarized some of the mainpoints of the lesson but quickly branched out to other top-ics:

The call should go out to everyone but each personshould have a chance to decide. For example, you cantalk to your friend about the importance of the hijab,but she must decide on her own . . . What are people’srights in da‘wa? People have the right to hear the mes-sage but with respect. We must respect people’s choiceseven if they go the other way.

By the way, those involved in da‘wa here [in Jordan]don’t follow these guidelines. They think they are theonly ones who know the truth. They pressure people.For example, regarding women covering their face, onlyone of four religious scholars have called for it. Theda‘wa people say women should cover their face. Theysay cover your face to fight imperialism.

Miss Suheil began by discussing the proper methods ofda‘wa, which are expressly covered in the text (Jabr et al.2004:180). She criticized those involved in such activities forfailing to follow these guidelines, accusing them of beingaggressive and believing that they have a monopoly on thetruth. She drew on the example of a woman covering herface, a practice uncommon in Jordan but increasingly be-ing practiced and encouraged by some groups involved inda‘wa activities. Furthermore, she satirized the links to im-perialism, highlighting the ways in which cultural politicsare often fought out over women’s bodies. In the process,she also worked to bolster her own authoritative messageabout Islam by critiquing what she saw as unacceptable orillegitimate.

Prompted by a passage in the textbook about callingnon-Muslims to Islam, Miss Suheil moved on to discuss theperception of Islam in the West:

Miss Suheil: There are those in the West who accuseMuslims of being terrorists. This does not represent the

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true Islam but, rather, a small group that claims to beMuslim.

Huda: And there are those who say that Islam oppresseswomen.

Miss S: Can you believe that they say that the hijabcloses minds [she says this as if she thinks this notion isridiculous, and some of the girls laugh with her]. Therewas this woman who used to write this in the newspa-per. She wrote that the hijab closes minds.

H: What was her background? Is she Muslim?

Miss S: She is a Jordanian, a Muslim. Such attitudesare wrong but so are those who follow their religiontoo strictly. For example, there are those who believethat girls can’t go to the university because it is “mixed”[i.e., coeducational]. There are girls like that here [in theschool].22 I tell them, “Is it better to stay home and notinfluence people at all?” She is worried about mixingwith males. Well, we walk down the street with males.We all studied in the university [i.e., the teachers]. Didthings fall apart? No. We should be rational. Being ex-tremely open and extremely closed or strict leaves uswith the same result. You decide how to behave at theuniversity. You can decide to sit on the other side of theroom . . . A girl can be anything. She can be a journal-ist, a doctor, a teacher . . . In Saudi Arabia they are toostrict . . . to a degree that is wrong.

Shortly thereafter, Miss Suheil returned to the topic of thehijab:

Miss S: In the prayer room, some girls say that a pinkishar (headscarf) is wrong. That is ridiculous. It’s okayto wear colors and different styles. After all, God madebeautiful things and God likes beauty, but with limits.

Jumana: A lot of people believe this. They believe theishar has to be white and the jelbab [an overcoat or robeworn over one’s clothes] black.

In this way, a lesson about da‘wa in the textbook evolvedinto a discussion about the importance of moderation andserved as an opportunity for Miss Suheil to criticize thoseshe considered to be extreme in their religious beliefs andin their proselytizing. It also served to put Miss Suheil inthe position of arbiter of legitimate religious knowledgeand practice. The call for moderation was not unique. Asevinced in the “Amman Message” mentioned above, mod-eration has been a hallmark of the regime’s platform on Is-lam and is threaded through all official pronouncementsof the Ministry of Education. The concept of “moderation”is found throughout the religious curriculum. A full lessonin the tenth-grade Islamic Education textbook is devotedto the topic, and the concept is interspersed through other

lessons. In some respects, Miss Suheil buttressed the stateposition on the need for religious moderation. However, shewas not merely mimicking official discourse but, rather, ap-propriating it to address her own sense of what was corrupt-ing Islam. Miss Suheil’s deployment of this discourse andthe way in which she related it to the everyday realities ofthe girls at al-Khatwa made moderation a tangible ideal—one more directly linked to the lives of the students thanthat conveyed by somewhat abstract slogans in an officialspeech. Through her lessons, the terms of moderation weremade more immediate than in the larger discursive projectof the state.

In the classroom discussion referenced above, the no-tion of “moderation” specifically led to a commentary onwomen’s dress, a frequent topic of discussion among somemembers of this community, as well as on the suitability ofcoeducational institutions. Miss Suheil criticized those ac-tive in the da‘wa movement for pressuring women to covertheir faces, and she reminded her students of the Qur’anicteaching, “God made beautiful things.”23 She defended cov-ering one’s hair, which was widely practiced and expected inBawadi al-Naseem, although, unlike some other teachers—such as the tenth-grade religion teacher, who regularly re-quested that her students cover their hair in her class—Inever heard Miss Suheil direct a student to cover her hair.In fact, covering one’s hair was not officially obligatory.The dress code at state schools only required that girls dona light-green, long-sleeved top over pants, to be worn atleast midthigh (although length was enforced with varyingconsistency). Thus, the debates about veiling and properforms of covering went above and beyond the officialdress code.

I observed that the overwhelming majority of adultwomen (over 90 percent) in Bawadi al-Naseem coveredtheir hair, and at the al-Khatwa School the majority ofgirls covered their hair by 12th grade.24 In keeping with thetrends in Islamic dress that have emerged in other parts ofthe region, covering one’s hair and the use of other formsof covering such as the jelbab have become so normal-ized in this community that debates centered on the formand color of cover or, in the case of adolescent girls, whenone should begin covering her hair.25 Miss Suheil criticizedthose in the West and in Jordan who considered the hijabto be oppressive. The student who responded to the claimthat the “hijab closes minds” was almost indignant, assum-ing that such a statement could only come from an outsider:“What is her background?” the student asked. Miss Suheilclarified that it was a Jordanian who had criticized the hi-jab. Miss Suheil rarely leveled her criticism at “outsiders”(although she often compared Jordan and the Arab worldto the West), reserving her censure for her own society. Herefforts to define the terms of proper faith were focused in-ward, even when she referenced the representation of Islamin the West.26

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Perspectives on the hijab within Jordan, but beyondBawadi al-Nasseem, were not unanimous. Several times, Iheard elite Jordanians complain about the proliferation ofthe hijab in the country. On one occasion, an elite Jorda-nian woman who worked with teachers on a national levelcomplained to me about the prevalence of veiling amongteachers. She wondered how teachers oppressed by the hi-jab could be effective educators. Another young woman liv-ing in Amman and working for an international organiza-tion complained that assumptions were made about herpersonality and intelligence because she veiled and worethe jelbab. The tensions conveyed in each of these caseswere clearly linked to class; however, class could not al-ways explain differences, as elite women sometimes choseto cover their hair.27 Although veiling is now prevalentthroughout the country, there remain some spaces in whicha woman who is veiled is marked as “traditional” or op-pressed. Thus, the struggles surrounding the terms of Islam,education, and progress for women were very much localones enmeshed with other contests for power and influencewithin Jordan itself.

For Miss Suheil, a religion teacher, the struggle overreligious authority was most immediate within the spaceof the school. When Miss Suheil argued that it was pos-sible to be modest and fashionable (as in the color of hi-jab discussion), she was responding to lectures given inthe school’s prayer room about proper forms of dress forMuslim women, during which females who wore colorfulheadscarves were criticized by student leaders and at leastone teacher. At times, Miss Suheil specifically objected tothe ideas articulated by the student president of the prayerroom, Amina, although Miss Suheil never mentioned Am-ina by name. As the religion teacher and the in-school re-ligion “expert,” Miss Suheil may have felt personally chal-lenged by others’ efforts to teach about Islam in school. Sheresponded to the challenge posed by Amina, as doing sowas critical to establishing her authority as a teacher. Am-ina represented both an individual challenge, because shefunctioned as an unofficial authority in the school, and aninstitutional one, because she was linked to a da‘wa move-ment in the community. Amina had made it clear to herpeers and teachers that she had decided, on moral grounds,not to go to university because all of the universities werecoeducational. Miss Suheil completely rejected religiousgrounds for not pursuing higher education. First, she ar-gued, if females wanted to be in a position to influence peo-ple (as in the case of the da‘wa preachers), leaving home andbeing out and active in places like the university was impor-tant. Second, she questioned the supposed consequencesof men and women interacting, asking sarcastically, “[Will]things fall apart?” After all, in contemporary Jordanian soci-ety, men and women often found themselves sharing publicspaces and moral chaos had not ensued; Jordanian societyhad not fallen apart.

The religion textbooks generally emphasize the impor-tance of knowledge and the pursuit of knowledge for allMuslims, as long as one approaches learning with a se-riousness of purpose, puts forth real effort, and remainsethical in his or her interactions with teachers and stu-dents (e.g., Dughmi et al. 1996:144–162). The 12th-gradeIslamic text specifically addresses coeducational institu-tions in a lesson on “The Provisions for the Mixing of theSexes” (Jabr et al. 2004:108). This unit suggests some am-bivalence about the propriety of young women going to co-educational institutions, although it is not forbidden by anymeans. The lesson outlines the conditions under which itis acceptable for men and women to be together (specifi-cally, men and women who are not muharram, “forbidden”to each other).28 Among the acceptable situations, the text-book highlights three: at times of war, to go to the market,or for the pursuit of education (Jabr et al. 2004:108). How-ever, the authors say that the pursuit of knowledge in a co-educational setting “is permitted only under the conditionthat the environment is completely devoted to learning asin the atmosphere of worship in a mosque or during the pil-grimage” (Jabr et al. 2004:110). Although the textbook statesthat Islam permits attendance at coeducational settings, itemphasizes the need for seriousness of purpose as well asmodest dress and demeanor. For Amina, the textbook didnot go far enough. In fact, many families were concernedabout the potential for moral corruption (typically a ref-erence to relationships with the opposite sex) at the uni-versity, and rumors about immoral behavior at universitieswere rampant. In light of these concerns, many families in-sisted that their daughters come right home after attendingclasses, in keeping with the directive of the textbook to stayfocused on the educational imperative.

In many respects, the fear that moral chaos is threat-ening a way of life is at the crux of the gendered tensionsthat Miss Suheil’s students faced. Betty Anderson (2007), inan analysis of Islamic education textbooks in Jordan, chartsa narrative of change as threatening. According to Ander-son, students are instructed that “individual transgressionwill lead to disintegration of society” (2007:81–82) and thatWestern influences will corrupt the Muslim world intellec-tually and culturally. Those like Amina and others in theda‘wa movement sought to convince young women andtheir families of the moral perils in contemporary Jordan,and official “wish-images” in the text can also foster similarsentiments. Even Miss Suheil, who sought to temper the cri-sis mentality of people like Amina, also found the “foreign”influences in media excesses to be a threat to the moral ed-ification of youth. Thus, for example, she criticized satelliteTV programs such as Star Academy and the values she be-lieved they promoted.29 She also regularly referenced presscoverage about women and Islam to make a case againstboth extreme liberalism (as exemplified for her by Nawal al-Saadawi and Amina Wadud) and the extreme conservatism

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of some religious programming on television. However, herpedagogical outlook meant that she preferred to engage herstudents in discussion about various forms of media ratherthan preach to them about dangers and hellfire.30 She cau-tioned her students to be discerning in their consumptionof media. Using her authority in the classroom, she soughtto “empower” the girls but with the intention of guidingthem toward her vision of correct Islam and the rejectionof other perspectives.

This perception of a “crisis” is in direct contradictionto the promises of national development, prosperity, andsecurity that education is meant to secure. At al-Khatwa,such promises seemed distant to some of the students, par-ticularly those for whom economic realities made highereducation and the potential for upward mobility difficultto attain, while education made them desirable.31 Further-more, debates about cultural and national authenticity, in-tegral to conceptions of progress, could often take on areligious tenor. These polemics, readily available in the pub-lic discourse, were manifest in very concrete terms for girlsthrough ideological debates about religious legitimacy inschool and the everyday discourse about modesty, morality,and the proper display of piety for a young Muslim woman.Although schools were meant to secure and legitimize of-ficial narratives, they could also serve to redefine and evendestabilize them. In this section, I have drawn attention tothe role of the teacher in such deliberations; however, stu-dents also served as arbiters of legitimate religious knowl-edge in schools.

Amina: An in-school preacher

Amina’s vocation was da‘wa. She wanted to show her peersthe “true” Islam and thus was engaged in actively tryingto define that truth. Amina was an average student, who,as noted above, regularly announced that she had no in-tention of going to university because it was coeducationaland, hence, immoral. She was one of a handful of girls atal-Khatwa and from among a small minority of women inBawadi al-Naseem who wore the full khimar. In Jordaniancolloquial speech, khimar refers to a long and loose robe,usually black, and a head covering that completely hides theface. Amina’s father had been a religion teacher for decades,and her family was active in da‘wa activities. Such a fam-ily history was not a given, however, for students active onthe prayer-room committee. Dunya, Amina’s friend and aprayer-room committee member, came from a family thathad only very recently become more observant, promptedby the “conversion” of her older sister, who became more re-ligious at the university and then preached to her own fam-ily, calling on them to be better Muslims.

Amina considered herself to be a da‘iyya, or femalepreacher, in training; in fact, she was already a preacherat school, taking any opportunity she could find to preach

about being a good Muslim. In addition to giving lecturesin the prayer room, she would give impromptu lectures inclass if a teacher did not show up or if a teacher endedclass early. She also had a tendency to turn an answer to ateacher’s question into a 20-minute monologue about reli-gious matters. Although Amina placed much weight on herinfluence over students, on the few occasions I observedher “lecturing” to her class, the majority seemed to loseinterest quickly, and some seemed annoyed by her intru-sion. In this context, they were a captive audience, unlikethe students who sought out Amina’s counsel in the prayerroom, for example. Some teachers encouraged her; at thevery least, they tolerated her. At least one student who hadbeen active on the prayer-room committee quit because, asshe said, “The girls only go when Amina is there and whenthey are not in the prayer room they are fooling around out-side . . . They act all nice and well behaved around Aminabut the minute she’s not around they are like a zipper that’swide open.” This student obviously harbored some resent-ment because of Amina’s dominance in the prayer room.Amina was clearly a charismatic figure, as even this studentacknowledged.

However, Amina did hold sway over some students.Khadije, a 12th grader, was a follower of Amina, andAmina’s influence led to major changes in Khadije’s dress(she began to cover her face) and in her behavior (shestopped listening to music). Khadije was socially awkward,had few friends, and was from a desperately poor family.She found much comfort in the attention she received fromAmina and her peers. I do not mean to imply that onlysomeone as marginalized as Khadije could respond to Am-ina’s preaching. Although many students were ambivalentor even openly dismissive of Amina, some clearly found herknowledge of Islam useful in their own struggles to makesomething meaningful in their lives, to help them deal withproblems at home,32 or just to make friends. This was par-ticularly the case for some of the students facing hardshipsand seeking counsel or emotional support. Some of thesestudents sought the advice of teachers; Miss Suheil was themost popular confidant among the students. Another of hercolleagues also served this role; students said they trustedher to keep their concerns private. Not all the girls dealingwith crises sought religious counsel. Some, like Shereen, a12th grader at al-Khatwa whose parents had divorced andwho was dealing with conflict at home, rebelled against thelocal social mores for proper dress and demeanor, regularlybutting heads with teachers and administrators. She wasalso openly dismissive of her religious peers.

One of the primary venues for Amina’s work wasthe prayer room. It was a small one-room building thathad been constructed sometime in the mid-1990s. Stu-dents who prayed regularly and wanted to do their mid-day prayers at the prescribed time were allowed to go intothe prayer room to do so.33 In addition to being a space to

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pray, the room was used for lectures organized by a stu-dent committee and presented during the midday break,where interested students could hear a fellow student or ateacher speak on a particular topic related to Islam. Accord-ing to Amina, it was her initiative as the student presidentthat led to the lunchtime lectures in the prayer room. Thenumber of students in the prayer room at lunchtime var-ied from 15 to 30, although attendance seemed to trickleoff as the semester progressed. The prayer-room commit-tee also held contests or competitions of Qur’anic mem-orization and knowledge of the Qur’an. Students workedunder the guidance of one of the teachers, Majida, who pro-vided books and sometimes money as prizes for such com-petitions. Although Majida acted as an advisor, the studentsseemed to have almost free rein over the activities held inthe prayer room, in distinct contrast to all other such “ex-tracurricular” activities at school.34 Amina and Dunya cor-roborated this, stating that they received very few directivesfor their work.

Al-Khatwa administrators viewed the influence of re-ligion and more-religious members of their community aspositive and in line with their efforts to ensure girls be-haved, respected their teachers, and followed school rules.The principal talked about the role of the prayer-room com-mittee as supportive of the school staff’s goals:

I tell them [the prayer-room committee]: “Keep your fo-cus on student behavior, manners, and discipline. Fo-cus on these things so we can cut down on the prob-lems in school.” If I notice that we [the school] are inneed of a particular lesson I will tell them, “Talk aboutthis or that.” For example, sometimes I ask them to talkabout makeup. Sometimes about lateness, absences,or the behavior of the girls in the street. These are thethings on which we focus.

The prayer-room committee was seen as an ally in keep-ing the students in line. The staff and administration tookthe perspective that these girls, and especially Amina,were calling their fellow students to Islam and encour-aging them to behave better, a positive activity from theperspective of a staff trying to keep nearly 600 studentsunder control and out of serious trouble. To this end,Amina was free to act and preach as she saw fit, even thoughshe represented a minority perspective, one that some con-sidered overly conservative and even extreme. The moralweight that Islam carries today in spaces such as schoolsis reflective of an era in which morality and honor are of-ten expressed in an Islamic idiom, whereas in the past theywere thought of in more general terms, encompassing reli-gion but not encapsulated by it (Abu-Lughod 1993).35 Thisshift in moral discourse may explain the free rein given tothe prayer-room committee, as the staff and the studentsappeared to be working in tandem. Yet the lack of oversightof this space and the independence given to the students

involved in managing it was uncharacteristic of the way inwhich business was normally conducted at al-Khatwa andother state schools.

The leeway given to these students may also have beena function of several other dynamics, namely, Amina’s sta-tus as a student and not a teacher, the informality of thespace of the prayer room, and the reality that the primaryactors were females. Had a teacher taken on the same roleas Amina, her behavior might have raised more concernfor diverging from the official curriculum. Indeed, anotherteacher told me she had been active in the prayer roomprior to my arrival at al-Khatwa but had been discour-aged by the administration from partaking in this activity.Although a teacher could deviate from the official curricu-lum in the privacy of her own classroom, preaching in theprayer room constituted a potentially more visible devi-ation that could raise concerns. Indeed, the religiosity ofteachers and the fear that some teachers might be promot-ing extremism has been raised as a concern in my pres-ence by some educators in Jordan, as it has in other coun-tries in the region (Herrera 2000; Starrett 1998; Zeghal 2010).Furthermore, Amina and her peers were not merely stu-dents, they were females. I can only speculate here, butthe specter of extremism that circulates in the region andaround the globe has a decidedly male cast. Although therehas always been a role for women as religious authoritiesin Islam, the dominant image and the reality of religiousauthority are male. As such, the activities of adolescentgirls like Amina are framed as less authoritative and, there-fore, less threatening than activities undertaken by males.Yet in the lives of their peers, these girls could be quiteinfluential.

Amina and her peers were given the autonomy to pur-sue their da‘wa activities because they did not seem toopenly contradict the official narrative about Islam andbecause school officials thought they might be helpful inmaintaining order in the school. However, in many respects,Amina’s Islam did challenge other perspectives on the truthand the authority of others in the school to define what itmeans to be a good Muslim. By preaching outside the pa-rameters of religion class and, in some instances, conveyinga message that was different from the one presented in theclassroom (e.g., concerning gendered modesty and the im-plications for women’s participation in public life), Aminaposed a challenge to official attempts to control religiousdiscourse in schools and to propagate standard narrativesabout women and development. Furthermore, by framingsome ideas and activities sanctioned by the school and theofficial curriculum as haram, or religiously forbidden, sheindirectly challenged the state’s religious legitimacy as wellas the moral standing of her peers and teachers who wereengaged in such activities (Adely 2007, 2010). On at least oneoccasion, she also acted to monitor the realm of acceptablereligious discourse.

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Maysoon and “unorthodox” Islam

The terms of acceptable debate about Islam were limited,as I discovered in the case of a student who was almostexpelled for her religious ideas. When Maysoon, an 11thgrader I had come to know, did not show up for school forseveral days, I heard conflicting stories about what had hap-pened to her. One of her classmates said her parents hadtaken her out of school because she “caused problems.” An-other girl told me that Maysoon had been transferred to an-other secondary school because of a disciplinary problem.36

She said that she heard Maysoon had had an argument withone of the teachers. Another student said she was trans-ferred because she was sitting with groups of girls and talk-ing with them about “strange” ideas. I tried to find out morefrom this student about what had transpired:

Fida: What kind of ideas?

Student: Well, she is in this religious group calledal-Habashiyya.

F: Are they Muslims?

S: Yes, they are but they are not accepted by Islam.

Another student: They follow ‘Ali.

F: Isn’t that Shi‘a?

S: Yes, they are Shi‘a.

F: I didn’t know there were Shi‘a in Jordan.37

S: They are from Palestine.

F: I didn’t think there were Shi‘a in Palestine either.

No one responded to my last comment. What eventually be-came clear after repeated inquiries was that Maysoon hadsomehow gotten involved in a controversial Islamic move-ment, al-Habashiyya. She had been speaking to her peersabout the movement, and this had led to her expulsion.Al-Habashiyya (lit. Ethiopian), or al-Ahbash, is the com-monly used name for members of the Association of Is-lamic Philanthropic Projects, an organization and move-ment established in Beirut by Shaykh ‘Abdalla, an EthiopianIslamic scholar. Al-Ahbash are known for their emphasison moderation and coexistence with Christians (Kabha andErlich 2006:525). They draw on some Sufi practices, al-though Mustafa Kabha and Haggai Erlich (2006:525) arguethat Sufism is not central to the identity of the movement.38

Their movement has spread throughout the region andhas a particularly strong presence in Lebanon and amongMuslim minority populations in Europe. Al-Ahbash havebeen in direct conflict with Wahhabi scholars, and Saudiclerics have issued fatwas against them, accusing them of

being “deviators” from Islamic orthodoxy (Kabha and Erlich2006:527).

I never learned what ideas Maysoon had soughtto share with her peers, but I discovered that the stu-dent prayer-room committee and Amina in particular hadbrought these “unacceptable” ideas to the attention of theiradvisor, Majida. Thus, what most students came to knowabout Maysoon’s expulsion was that she had had a dis-agreement with Majida. On a couple of occasions, I triedto learn more about this incident from Amina and some ofher peers, but they seemed determined to keep the detailsof this incident quiet and I respected their wishes. WhenI asked Miss Suheil about Maysoon, she did not explicitlydiscuss the incident, saying, “I do not like to just reject astudent’s ideas. I don’t like to just disregard them. I liketo approach them through discussion. I try and convincethem.” Thus, what made Miss Suheil unique as a religionteacher was not that she did not seek to be authoritative;rather, it was her pedagogical perspective, which viewed ra-tional debate and discussion as the best means to arrive at“true” religious knowledge.39

To my surprise, Maysoon returned to school after sev-eral weeks. When I asked the principal what had transpired,she explained, “Maysoon was talking about some religiousmovement, al-Habashiyya, in school with the girls. We donot allow new ideas that are not acceptable to society, es-pecially ideas about religion, in school.” The principal ex-plained that she and Maysoon’s father had agreed to let thegirl think that she was expelled for two weeks and then al-low her to come back to school if she promised never to dis-cuss such things again. The principal said that Maysoon’sparents thought their daughter was going to “ordinary” reli-gion lessons at someone’s house and did not realize that un-orthodox ideas were being taught. Although al-Habashiyyahas a small presence in Jordan (Kabha and Erlich 2006:523–524), the group was clearly considered outside the realm ofthe acceptable.

The staff and teachers, in tandem with students,worked to prevent the emergence of a different religiousperspective—one outside the bounds of the dominantSunni narrative. The al-Habashiyya movement was made“unthinkable” (Asad 1993:35) by the power of this dom-inant narrative, and the move to silence Maysoon wasswift. Maysoon was disciplined because she challenged thebounds of acceptable religious belief. Amina seemed an-gered by Maysoon’s transgressions and even demanded anapology from her on her return. In speaking with me, theprincipal did not convey any personal sentiments aboutal-Habashiyya but, rather, a concern with her role as moralarbiter of what was socially acceptable at the school. MissSuheil took a slightly different stance; although she did notquestion the premise that Maysoon’s new beliefs were prob-lematic, she argued that the adults in the school shouldhave approached the project of guiding Maysoon to the

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right knowledge differently. Despite the prevalence of de-bates about proper faith within the school, the terms ofsuch debates were limited by the power of a dominant dis-course, even if the terms of that discourse were regularlytested.

Conclusion

Adults in Bawadi al-Naseem considered religious instruc-tion to be generally positive and integral to the moral ed-ification of youth; the ideal of teachers as moral guides,working in tandem with parents, made such instruc-tion particularly imperative in schools. Miss Suheil’scommitment as an educator stemmed from her sense ofduty as a teacher. Often in speaking about “good” teach-ers, parents and teachers alike talked about those who “givewith conscience” (ba‘atu bidamirhum). In contrast, par-ents and teachers referred to those who shirked their re-sponsibilities as teachers “without conscience” or teach-ers “who did not work with conscience.” Miss Suheil wasclearly a teacher who worked with conscience; she caredfor the minds and souls of her charges. She was also a re-ligious woman, and her teaching, both in style and in com-mitment, stemmed from her sense of what Islam requiredof her. The role of the teacher, then, is a most significantone in a context in which teachers are still expected to bemoral guides. Just as school administrators were concernedwith discipline and control, they were also concerned withproducing good girls and citizens. Proper faith was part andparcel of this project for many of the adults and students atal-Khatwa. In a changing educational landscape that placesan increasing premium on technical and marketable skills,the emphasis on teachers as moral guides is decreasing. Asa result, moral guidance becomes the preserve of those ex-pressly concerned with doing da‘wa, granting teachers andstudents with a more explicitly religious agenda more spacefor their work.

Gregory Starrett has argued that the process of makingreligion applicable and useful to everyday life in a state re-ligious curriculum—what he calls “functionalization”—hasunintentionally supplied the tools for a counterdiscourseof Islamic opposition in the Egyptian context: “In order forcompulsory schooling to relay knowledge of the ‘legitimate’religious culture sufficient to attain its goal of social con-trol, it must use pedagogical techniques that work to under-mine the authority of the holders of religious legitimacy bymarginalizing the means of cultural production that theypossess” (1998:187, emphasis added). Further, he argues,this process of functionalization serves to undermine notonly the state’s dominance over the interpretation of re-ligious knowledge but that of the traditional religious au-thorities as well, in essence popularizing or democratizingprocesses of attaining and making meaning of religion. Theway in which religion is objectified and then functionalized

in state schools has a powerful, albeit unintended, effect.The curriculum in Jordan similarly functionalizes religion,but the clearest models of these pedagogical techniques atal-Khatwa were evidenced in the strategies of teachers likeMiss Suheil and of students—most prominently, Amina, the16-year-old da‘iyya—rather than in the textbooks or cur-riculum itself. The textbooks are meant to impart ortho-doxy, the accepted account of proper faith, but their trans-mission is incumbent on the work of such actors. Properbehavior and comportment, legitimate textual references,and acceptable belief are communicated through the prac-tices and narratives of individuals in the space of the school.Discourses that vie for this authority are many, but not ev-eryone is accorded equal authority, as I have shown here.

The ethnographic evidence presented here points tothe fragility of the “discursive coherence” that various au-thorities seek to impose (Asad 1993). As Asad (1986) has ar-gued, the terms of religious orthodoxy are shaped by thesocial and historical conditions to which this religious dis-course must continually respond. The tensions betweenMiss Suheil and Amina as well as Miss Suheil’s struggleagainst the corrupting influences of popular media andun-Islamic “traditions” are indicative of the struggles overproper faith that emerge from such conditions. They arealso undoubtedly a function of power—the power to de-fine and delimit the parameters of acceptable discourse. InJordan the parameters surrounding acceptable discourseare limited to a Sunni Islamic narrative,40 whether that ofthe state, the Muslim Brotherhood, those involved in da‘wa,or a range of other religious “experts” vying for authority.

Teaching about Islam was part of everyday efforts topoint others in the “right” direction and fulfill the per-sonal responsibility to do da‘wa within one’s capacity. Giventhe increasing number of Jordanians involved in da‘wa,or piety, movements, schools are logical places for suchactivities. The Muslim Brotherhood has long seen edu-cation and teaching as among its most important voca-tions (Wiktorowicz 2001). Even the leftists and nationalistsof the 1940s and 1950s saw schools as critical recruitinggrounds for their efforts to create an Arab nationalistethic (Anderson 2005; Kharinu 2000). The piety move-ments are a new manifestation of these historical efforts toshape young minds, beliefs, and practices through school.They are less about recruiting members to formal politi-cal organizations than about calling Muslims to be betterMuslims. This struggle to participate in the moral edifica-tion of youth is not limited to the efforts of organizationsthat challenge the state but also involves teachers and ad-ministrators who want to control students and maintain or-derly schools as well as shape moral citizens and commu-nity members. However, these are clearly political contestsas well. As Mahmood (2005) has argued, ultimately, debatesabout proper forms of piety and legitimate forms of reli-gious knowledge are deeply political.

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As I have shown in this article, although most educatorsat al-Khatwa accepted the centrality of Islam in this processof edification, different ideas about what proper faith con-stitutes circulated within the confines of the school. Fur-thermore, these debates were entwined with the gender de-liberations that have characterized contending discoursesabout progress, development, and authenticity in Jordan.Competing interpretations of the proper modesty and com-portment of women, images of the proper Muslim family,and legitimate gender roles and relations are all central toreligious discourse in Jordan today, as they are to shapingpublic images of what a girl’s future may hold. At al-Khatwa,these struggles were manifest in the competing efforts tobe authoritative in the space of the school. The state’scurriculum and public discourse about Islam and moder-ation constitute the dominant narrative and the one withthe most resources at its disposal. Educators are state rep-resentatives, but they are also social actors with their ownexperiences, lives, and intentions. As such, their strugglesto be authoritative are not contained by state designs. I donot mean to imply that they are always in opposition to thestate. Indeed, Miss Suheil’s teaching, a focus of my analysisin this article, was in many respects in step with the officialnarrative. But the “wish-images” of the textbooks are lim-ited in their reach and the discourse of public figures distantand abstract. It is in the teaching and day-to-day interac-tions that such sentiments are made actual—but also openand thus malleable yet always with limits (Butler 1993).

Furthermore, the teacher is not alone in her teaching.Amina was the most prominent other “unofficial” religiouseducator at al-Khatwa and one whose lessons directly chal-lenged the authority of others in the school, even if onlyMiss Suheil publicly problematized the ideas she promoted.Amina’s work also highlights the porosity of the school wallsand, as a result, official authorities’ inability to control theterms of religious discourse. Yet it was not just Amina andher da‘wa group that entered this space, for the substanceof religious authority was multifarious, albeit not all com-ponents were equally powerful. From the al-Habashiyyamovement that almost led to Maysoon’s expulsion to thetelevision preachers who conveyed a range of doctrinal per-spectives and the satellite television that functioned as a foilfor what is right and good, the religious material and senti-ments that flowed through the school were many and theattempts to interpret, foreground, and forbid particular vi-sions of true Islam were persistent and gendered.

Notes

Acknowledgments. The ethnographic research for this articlewas generously funded by a Fulbright Islamic Scholar Fellowship.The article also benefited from the careful reading and feedback ofBetty Anderson, Rochelle Davis, Kim Shively, and two anonymousreviewers for American Ethnologist. This article draws on a chap-

ter that will appear in Gendered Paradoxes: Educating JordanianWomen in Nation, Faith and Progress (forthcoming from the Uni-versity of Chicago Press).

1. All names used in this article are pseudonyms.2. Bawadi al-Naseem is a city of about 50 thousand situated 65

kilometers from Amman.3. My school-based research was undertaken over nine months,

and the bulk of my primary fieldwork in Bawadi al-Naseem tookplace over a period of 15 months in 2002 and 2005. I also under-took discussions with select teachers, students, and their familiesin the summers of 2008 and 2009. The school-based ethnographyincluded observations in over 90 classes, with at least 30 observa-tions of religion classes.

4. As a Jordanian American from a Christian family, I was en-gaged in many discussions about religion that are not the focusof this article. Some students were curious about Christianity andasked me questions about the Christian faith. When Pope John PaulII died during the course of my research, my knowledge of the pa-pal institution was tested by many inquiries. In addition, a Chris-tian staff member at al-Khatwa regularly preached to me about herown Christian beliefs. Finally, some students sought to educate meabout Islam, among them, Amina, whom I discuss at length in thisarticle. Although these interactions are not the focus of this piece,they do provide important backdrop to my analysis here.

5. Political analysts have characterized Jordan as the nation inthe region that has best managed its relationship with political Is-lam (Brand 1998; Moaddel 2002; Schwedler 2006; Tal 1995; Wik-torowicz 2001). The Muslim Brotherhood has historically viewedsupport for and cooperation with the regime as in its own in-terests and has benefited from this cooperation. The Hashemiteregime has similarly benefited from this history of cooperation andsought to placate Islamists through policies that did not threatenits own interests, most notably, inaction with respect to the depen-dent legal status of women, particularly in terms of personal sta-tus laws (Brand 1998). This relationship has been more conflict rid-den under the current king, and in recent years, the Muslim Broth-erhood has been dealing with its own internal struggles. Govern-ment gerrymandering of parliamentary representation since the1990s has also successfully blocked the IAF from increasing its pres-ence in parliament. In 2011, as increasing pressure was placed bythe Muslim Brotherhood, as well as by other opposition, or “prore-form,” groups, on the Jordanian regime to make political changes,relations between the government and Islamists deterioratedfurther.

6. As in other parts of the region, this revival has been precipi-tated by a number of political events and sociocultural transforma-tions. Politically, a growing disillusionment with the leftist, or sec-ular, nationalist politics of the postindependence era is often citedas a precipitating factor for the religious revival and the growingpopularity of Islamic political groups (e.g., Mahmood 2005). In Jor-dan, the Muslim Brotherhood was allowed to flourish through threedecades of martial law, during which political parties were bannedand leftist groups suppressed, enabling it to build an institutionalbase (Brand 1998; Clark 2004).

7. Awqaf are religious endowments.8. In the fall of 2006, the regime put forth several pieces of leg-

islation aimed at tighter control over the religious realm, and in2006 the Jordanian government took control of the largest Islamiccharity, the Islamic Center Society (Ammannet 2006; al-Ghad 2006;al-Rai 2006). As of February 2011, it still held receivership over thecharity, through which many of the Brotherhood’s educational pro-grams are offered.

9. One exception is Gregory Starrett’s Putting Islam to Work(1998).

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10. Education is compulsory through tenth grade, and the ma-jority of students, male and female, go on to complete the two-yearsecondary phase as well (11th and 12th grades). In 2009, the Min-istry of Education reported that 22 percent of Jordanian studentswere enrolled in private schools (Jordan Times 2009). Some of theseprivate schools have a religious mandate and supplement the stan-dard curriculum with additional religious learning—both formaland informal. In addition, in 2005–06, about 8 percent of studentswere enrolled in UNRWA schools for Palestinian refugees (JordanMinistry of Education 2011).

11. The overwhelming majority of the private schools are re-quired to use the state curriculum and state-produced textbooksfor religious education. The only exceptions, to my knowledge, areforeign-owned and managed schools such as the American School,which is not registered with the Ministry of Education.

12. In the secondary phase of schooling (11th and 12th grades),students are placed into an academic or a vocational track, a deci-sion based on their previous academic performance. The two mainacademic streams in 2005 were the literary stream and the sciencestream. In addition, some schools offered shari‘a, or Islamic law,although it was not offered at al-Khatwa or elsewhere in Bawadial-Naseem. Presumably, students in this track take much more re-ligion. In 2005, the public schools also began offering an “informa-tion management” stream.

13. In communities where a significant Christian population ex-ists, the local Christian community may lobby to have a teacherinstruct Christian students about Christianity. A private schoolthat my children attended in Amman in 2011 offered classes forChristian students. In this case, the school had adopted textbooksdeveloped by the Roman Catholic Patriarchate of Jerusalem forthis purpose. Thus, regardless of Christian denomination, all Chris-tian students used Roman Catholic textbooks. Christian studentsmay also attend the regular religion class (i.e., the Islamic one) ifthey choose to do so. At al-Khatwa, Christian students typicallyleft their classroom during religion class. On occasion, Christianstudents remained either because they wanted to stay indoorsout of the cold or because they were curious about the religionlessons.

14. The same curriculum is used in boys’ and girls’ schools.Again, the textbook and curriculum are essentially synonymous inthis context, in that the textbook acts as the curricular guide (thereare teachers’ versions of texts), and are commissioned and pub-lished by the Ministry of Education.

15. In 2005, all tenth graders took a course entitled Islamic Edu-cation, or Al-tarbiyya al-islamiyya, which consisted of seven units:the (Islamic) creed, the study of the Holy Qur’an, the study of theprophetic hadith, the life of the Prophet, ethics and moral culti-vation, jurisprudence, and Islamic systems and thought (Dughmiet al. 1996). All 11th graders took Islamic Culture, or Al-thaqafaal-islamiyya, which consisted of the following units: the Islamicview on human beings, the family in Islam, the Islamic society andsystem, the life of the Prophet and Islamic civilization, da‘wa (orcalling to the faith) and jihad (or struggle), and the Holy Qur’an(Jabr et al. 2004). Twelfth graders, similarly, took a course enti-tled Islamic Culture, which consisted of the same topics as thosestudied by 11th graders, with the addition of the Holy Qur’an(recitation, interpretation, and memorization) and the contempo-rary Islamic world. In addition to the general curriculum for all stu-dents, students in the humanities track at the secondary level (11thand 12th grades) took one additional Islamic studies course—forthe 11th graders, it was Islamic Education, and for the 12th graders,it was Islamic Studies. The topics covered for 11th graders in thistrack were family, work, and knowledge in Islam as well as top-ics related to worship and the Islamic creed (Dughmi et al. 1996).

For 12th graders, the focus was primarily on jurisprudence, hadith,and Qur’anic studies as well as monotheism and the Islamic creed(Sawa et al. 2001).

16. Devout Muslims believe that Islam has an “answer” for anyand all issues that may arise. The distinction I am trying to makehere is between those aspects of life explicitly addressed in reli-gious texts and in Islamic teachings and those that require greaterdegrees of interpretation.

17. The “progressive education” movement grew out of the workof John Dewey around the turn of the 20th century and was con-cerned with the broader mission of schools to encourage the devel-opment of democratic societies. Dewey stressed the social natureof learning and argued that education should help young peopleaddress the practical concerns of their societies. Hence, his edu-cational philosophy emphasized problem solving, critical-thinkingskills, and knowledge that would connect young people to theircommunities and encourage them to be active citizens helping toconstruct a democratic society (Phillips and Soltis 2004). A youngergeneration of Jordanian teachers was quite familiar with the dis-course of some of this pedagogical perspective, and a series of ed-ucational reforms continues to emphasize them. However, the useof such methods was still limited, in my experience.

18. When I returned to the United States after first getting toknow Miss Suheil, she asked me to purchase a copy of a book forher on “emotional intelligences,” which stresses the importanceof giving attention to the emotional lives and learning of childrenand adults alike and has been instrumental in some contemporarythinking about education.

19. A number of scholars writing about women’s movements inthe region highlight examples of Islamist reformers or Islamic femi-nists. For example, see Barlas 2002, Baron 1994 and 2005, and Mah-mood 2005.

20. Da‘wa literally means “calling,” and in the context of Islam itrefers to the “call to Islam.”

21. “Missionary work” here refers specifically to work amongother Muslims who were perceived to have strayed from Islam orwho were not sufficiently committed to practicing the faith. SomeJordanians involved in such activities traveled abroad to pursueda‘wa among Muslims and non-Muslims in other countries, al-though, in my experience, their numbers were few.

22. Here, Miss Suheil is referring to Amina, the president of theprayer-room committee. I discuss Amina and the prayer room sub-sequently in this article.

23. “He made beautiful everything He created” (Qur’an 32:7).24. One of the teachers did not cover her hair. Neither did a

prominent female education official in this district who often at-tended school events.

25. The norm of modesty in dress is not a new one; however, asthis article conveys, the parameters of modest practices and behav-iors are continuously negotiated. In an earlier era, most women andmen would have covered their hair in some fashion, but the newforms of veiling and covering are distinctly “modern” phenomena.Also, the practice of covering one’s face has little precedent in Jor-dan, according to Jordanians I have spoken with. However, since1993, when I first lived in Jordan for an extended period of time, Ihave observed a notable increase in the number of women in dif-ferent parts of the country, including the capital, who cover theirfaces.

26. Deeb’s (2006) research among Shi‘i women reveals the wayin which the West can simultaneously function as audience, model,and foil.

27. Much of the research on the Islamic revival has pointed to itsmiddle-class roots, particularly among university-educated youngmen and women (el-Guindi 1981; Hatem 1988). Jordan fits this

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pattern, although, as elsewhere, the revival is no longer confinedto the middle class (Clark 2004).

28. Islamic teaching specifies who is and is not forbidden to aMuslim in marriage. One who is forbidden in marriage is calledmahram (pl. maharim). Each of the units on marriage at the sec-ondary level has lessons on this topic (Jabr et al. 2004).

29. Star Academy is a reality TV program produced in Lebanonthat is a cross between American Idol and The Real World. For moreon the political implications of such programming, see the work ofMarwan Kraidy (2010).

30. In contrast, one of the other religion teachers at al-Khatwaheld a special class in the library that included visuals about death,judgment day, and heaven and hell.

31. Although class distinctions were not as pronounced inBawadi al-Naseem as they appeared to be in the capital, where con-spicuous consumption could provide stark contrasts, they existed.The most obvious distinction I noted was between the professionalclass and an “unskilled” working class that was typically poorer,although those with professional jobs were not always better offfinancially. The distinction between these two groups had as muchto do with the social status that came with their professions and ed-ucation as it did with income. Some families without professionalcredentials were wealthy because of assets (mostly land) they hadinherited. One family of an al-Khatwa student that I came to knowexpressed regret and even shame about its members’ lack of edu-cation despite their wealth.

32. Indeed, Amina told me that her peers often sought her adviceabout conflicts they had with their parents or siblings.

33. Observant Muslims pray daily at five prescribed times. How-ever, Islamic teachings exempt students from prayer during theschool day; they can instead make up for their “missed” prayer oncethey go home. Students were not allowed to miss class to pray buthad the opportunity to do their noontime prayer during the mid-day break or after their last period. Teachers who prayed at schooldid not do so in the prayer room but chose to use other spaces inthe main building.

34. All other extracurricular activities were very much top-downaffairs, originating in directives from government ministries to lo-cal officials and eventually to principals. Principals would, in turn,recruit a teacher to oversee select students in a particular project.

35. The prevalence of explicitly religious discourse in many day-to-day social interactions is a discernible outcome of the religiousrevival in Jordan over the last few decades (since at least the 1980s),and it is one that more-religious Jordanians point to as evidenceof increased religious awareness and authentic religious knowledgeamong Muslims in a new era. Islam was never absent from schools,but in an earlier era, nationalism and specifically Arab nationalismfigured strongly into the public discourse about education and inthe lives of students and teachers alike (Anderson 2005). In schools,students were expected to behave well, respect their teachers, andapproach their learning with a seriousness of purpose. Teacherswere assigned great respect and authority—a respect that many ed-ucators assert no longer exists. As it has been conveyed to me, thisrespect was very much about educational status and the expertisethat these teachers were believed to hold. The first teachers rep-resented progress and development and the promise of educationfor those who accepted the efficacy of state schooling. Thus, thedemand for respect was very much tied up with political and so-cial developments of the era. With the religious revival, adults andstudents alike frequently reference a religious discourse to moti-vate good behavior in schools—one that always existed in someform but that has greater prominence today. Of course, religiousdiscourse is not the only disciplinary discourse in schools, as I showelsewhere (Adely, in press).

36. One form of punishment in schools in Jordan is a transferwhereby a student can be sent to a distant village or another city fora serious disciplinary infraction. Teachers may also be punitivelytransferred.

37. The overwhelming majority of Jordan’s population is SunniMuslim (92 percent). The remainder of the population is a mix ofChristians, Shi‘a, and Druze, with Christians representing as muchas 5 percent (the Jordanian government does not publish officialstatistics about religion). With the influx of Iraqi refugees (some ofthem Shi‘a) as well as the increasingly predominant political dis-course of “Iran” as a threat to Arab countries, the fear or rejectionof Shi‘ism has become more prevalent in the past few years andis openly discussed. No Shi‘a students were enrolled at al-Khatwa.Christian students, a small but protected minority, are in some re-spects given greater legitimacy than nonmajority Muslims. Chris-tians are recognized as “people of the book” and are allowed toworship and study their religion. Despite this status, with increasedreligiosity among Muslims in the region as well as violence directedat Christians in some neighboring countries (Egypt and Iraq), manyChristians in Jordan express feelings of vulnerability. In 2009, an in-cident involving Jordanian Christian children accused of insultingthe Prophet Muhammad almost erupted into violence and led tothe arrest of adults from their families.

38. For a different opinion, see Hamzeh and Dekmejian 1996.39. Deeb (2006) describes a process she calls “authentification”

among Lebanese Shi‘i women that resonates with Miss Suheil’s per-spective here. In addition to genuine intent, Deeb argues, authenticpiety requires the pursuit of knowledge and rational debate.

40. In their edited volume on Islamic studies textbooks in eightMiddle Eastern countries and the Occupied Palestinian territories,Starrett and Doumato find that each state constructs a differentimage of what it means to be Muslim, although almost all seek topresent a “generic Islam” (2007:20) that avoids any discussion ofsectarian difference. Furthermore, with the exception of Iran, thisgeneric image is a Sunni one.

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Fida AdelyCenter for Contemporary Arab StudiesGeorgetown University37th and O Streets, NW143 ICCWashington, DC 20057-1020

[email protected]

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FIDA ADELY Georgetown University “God made beautiful things” · FIDA ADELY Georgetown University “God made beautiful things”: Proper faith and religious authority in a Jordanian