Political Islam in Jordan: A Plurality of Visions

Political Islam in Jordan today needs to be reconsidered according to a twofold perspective that considers the Hashemite monarchy’s traditional approach to the state-religion relationship since the Kingdom’s independence in 1946 as well as Jordan’s complex geopolitical position that has imposed on both the Crown and Jordanian Islamists a recurring tug-of-war between domestic and regional imperatives. Unlike in most Middle Eastern states, the Jordanian political system was established not in competition with the religious sphere and actors but by bureaucratizing and co-opting them. In this framework, the Hashemite mechanism of control has created a sort of blocked pluralist system aimed at encompass- ing all the competing groups in Jordanian society