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THE JORDANIAN MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD: EXCEPTIONAL OR COMMON AFTER ALL? JOAS WAGEMAKERS | 22 JULY 2020 [Lena Ha / Shutterstock] WWW.OASISCENTER.EU/EN The dissolution of the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood suggests that the latter’s fate is similar to that of other Islamist movements in the Middle East. But this conclusion fails to consider the peculiar story of the Ikhwān in Jordan. An account of their relations with the Hashemite regime The Muslim Brotherhood (Jamā‘at al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn) was founded in Egypt by a school teacher named Hasan al-Banna (1906-1949) in 1928. The organisation meant to fight the British colonial influence in Egypt at the time, was strongly anti-Zionist and aimed to inspire, educate and mobilise the Egyptian population with a vague, simple and somewhat populist message: “Islam is the solution”. The Brotherhood quickly spread throughout Egypt and grew in numbers. Because of its success, it became an example for other like-minded Islamic activists in the Middle East, including in Jordan. The Muslim Brotherhood’s fortunes have varied throughout the Middle East, but its story has often been one of repression. The organisation—or similar groups working under different names—was cracked down upon in Egypt in the 1940s–1960s and was even decimated in Syria in the 1980s. In the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian branch of the Brotherhood—Hamas—has held power since 2007, but it has been embattled—both locally by Fatah and internationally by Western powers—ever since. Jordan, by contrast, seems to have been an oasis of stability for the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been accepted by the Hashemite regime almost since its founding. In 2020, however, the organisation was officially dissolved, raising the question of whether the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood was really an exception in the Arab world or rather common after all. This article seeks to answer that question by looking at the organisation’s historical background, its political integration, its social activities and the breakdown of its relationship with the regime. Historical Background The Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan was founded by ‘Abd al-Latif Abu Qura (d. 1967), a merchant from the Jordanian city of al-Salt who had been a staunch proponent of the Palestinian cause for years. Abu Qura had indicated his desire to found a local branch of the organisation to al-Banna and the latter supported him in this. With the help of emissaries from Egypt and strongly influenced by their ideology, the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood began in 1945.1 It had a rather vague ideological platform that focussed on spreading and teaching Islam to a new generation of Muslims and setting up an Islamic system and society in cooperation with similar organisations elsewhere in the Arab world.2 Unlike its Egyptian counterpart, the Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood initially had quite a narrow agenda that avoided overtly political issues in Jordan itself and focussed mostly on what they saw as the liberation of Palestine. Given the desire of the ruler, Emir (and later King) ‘Abdallah (r. 1921– 1951), to buttress his own Islamic credentials and to support an alternative to the secular and revolutionary forces that were so popular in the region at the time, it was perhaps not surprising that the regime gave the Muslim Brotherhood official (yet sceptical) permission for its activities in 1946.3 The reason King ‘Abdallah was somewhat wary of the organisation was that he realised that the Muslim Brotherhood’s views on Palestine were quite at odds with his own, more pro-Zionist ones and he therefore made the group seek explicit official permission to set up new branches and even buildings so as to keep a close eye on them.4 While the king’s relatively pro-Zionist and pro-Western views had the potential to clash with the ideas of the Brotherhood, the latter nevertheless managed The Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood: Exceptional or Common After All? | www.oasiscenter.eu/en | 1 to integrate its own views into those of the regime and support the latter at times when it needed it most. When the monarchy was challenged for being insufficiently Arab by Arab nationalists across the region, for example, the Brotherhood strongly opposed the pro-Western and anti-communist Baghdad Pact and Eisenhower Doctrine in the 1950s and applauded King ‘Abdallah’s successor and grandson King Husayn (r. 1953–1999) when he refused to join them. The same applies to the monarch’s decision to rid the Jordanian army of the last vestiges of colonial influence by dismissing the British General and Chief of Staff of the kingdom’s armed forces, John Bagot Glubb, in 1956. The Brotherhood similarly supported the regime during an alleged Arab nationalist coup in 1957 and tacitly agreed when the state killed or expelled thousands of Palestinian militants in “Black” September 1970.5 Political Integration In the meantime, the Muslim Brotherhood had been allowed to participate in parliamentary elections and had had a parliamentary presence since the 1950s. This changed when national elections were suspended by the regime in 1967, when Jordan lost the West Bank to Israel and thus could not include all the people it considered Jordanians in the political process. After the regime renounced its claims to the West Bank in 1988, this could no longer be used as an excuse, however, and after far-reaching economic reforms in 1989 led to protests in the country, the regime sought to channel this unrest through renewed parliamentary elections in the same year. The Muslim Brotherhood did very well in these elections, winning 22 seats (out of 88 in total), and became the biggest parliamentary force in the country.6 The regime, however, was less interested in real democratisation and more concerned with keeping potential opposition at bay.7 As such, it sought to curb the Brotherhood’s influence by gerrymandering electoral districts and changing the electoral law. As a result, the organisation lost six seats in the elections of 1993.8 In the meantime, the Jordanian government had adopted a political parties law in 1992, compelling all movements that wanted to participate in elections to do so through actual political parties. The Muslim Brotherhood responded to this by setting up the organisationally independent Islamic Action Front (IAF) in the same year. The fact that Jordanian Islamists now had their own party whose sole task was to deal with politics strengthened a growing politicisation in the movement that had started with the rise of a new generation of leaders who, particularly after the demise of foreign enemies like the British, started focussing more and more on Jordanian issues. This politicisation, a brief period of governmental participation by the Brotherhood in 1991 as well as the founding of the IAF also led to an internal debate on the Islamic arguments for and against taking part in a system that was not (fully) Islamic. This debate eventually settled on the conclusion that it was allowed to participate in the Jordanian system.9 Although the debate cleared the way for political participation from an Islamic point of view, it did not undo the measures the regime had taken against the Brotherhood and the IAF to limit their influence. The situation became even worse from their point of view when King Husayn made peace with Israel in 1994, an agreement that the Muslim Brotherhood and the IAF (as well as many other Jordanians) vehemently rejected. The IAF’s inability to stop the peace accord with Israel as well as its more general lack of success in parliament not only made it more oppositional, but it also increased the number of Islamists who believed it would be better to boycott the 1997 parliamentary elections. Although not all members of the party agreed with this, the IAF as a whole eventually decided not to participate in the 1997 polls.10 The Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood: Exceptional or Common After All? | www.oasiscenter.eu/en | 2 Social Activities An important part of the Muslim Brotherhood’s popularity and electoral success was based on its extensive network of social activities, which “represent the foundations of [the] alternative society” as the organisation envisages it.11 The Brotherhood’s efforts in this regard go back decades to the very beginning of the organisation. This was partly related to the official permission it received from the regime: precisely because the latter did not want the Brotherhood to act as a force of political opposition, it was recognised as a charitable association in 1946, not as a political group. Although this mandate was broadened when the organisation gained official permission as an “Islamic group” in 1953, it was clear that in order to remain on good terms with the regime, the Brotherhood had better limit its activities to uncontroversial things. These initially included fighting in the 1948 war over Palestine, in which the Jordanian army also participated, and recruitment through boy scouts clubs and mosques.12 Since the 1950s, the Muslim Brotherhood has expanded its social activities to education. It has set up primary schools of its own to give children both a profane and a religious education that is focussed on leading an Islamic lifestyle, which includes the separation of boys and girls in class, Islamic family values and encouraging pupils to fast during the month of Ramadan. A more important educational activity that the Muslim Brotherhood has engaged in is trying to influence the existing public school system. This was rooted in the organisation’s frustration over what they saw as a Western curriculum taught at schools and universities. In response, Brotherhood members tried and succeeded to obtain jobs at the Ministry of Education in the 1960s, from which they were able to influence the curricula as well as the process of hiring people.

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