Daily Dispatch: March 12, 2010

By Sam Petulla

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Tammy Mutasa donned a white robe for the prayer service on Friday. (Lim/Journey to Jerusalem)

AMMAN, Jordan – Today, inside the King Hussein Bin Talal Mosque, after imam Sheik Rababa delivered a sermon about the value of togetherness, compassion, and keeping a clean heart, the members of our traveling seminar were asked to leave the services before the juma, the main gathering prayer. On a day of considerable  cultural mixing and exchange, the cognitive dissonance produced by our ejection from the mosque stood out as the most prominent point where East failed to completely meet West.

Our Friday in Amman started at 10 a.m. at our hotel, with a hot breakfast of coffee, mango and apple juices, boiled eggs, and Egyptian beans. Fueled by the food, but still reeling from less than six hours sleep, we set off for the King Hussein Mosque. The day was warm and bright—nothing like the rainy weather we feared we might get—and many of us were dressed for summer.

Short sleeves became an early sticking point for some once we arrived. On the bus, Professor Goldman explained that women without covered arms or hair would need to wear a special costume. Men were expected to roll down their shirt sleeves. Although cameras were prohibited during services, Goldman said photography would be permissible during a Q & A with the imam later in the morning. As we got off the bus, it felt like an Arizona summer.  The mosque’s sandstone walls and light tan concrete promenades seemed to glow white hot in the sun. In accordance with Islamic law, the men and women split up to enter their respective prayer areas: the men went to the right, the women to the left. The women watched the service from a screened balcony in the back of the mosque, following the imam on television screens with a live camera feed.

Inside the mosque, the imam gave a sermon that included an Islamic story about a woman who didn’t properly care for her cat, eventually causing it to die. Despite a life filled with otherwise good behavior, her heart was tarnished by this single failing, the imam said. We weren’t able to understand the Arabic-led services, but translator Yazid Bitar explained that the parable was meant to illustrate that “there has to be a balance in how we deal with both the heart and the mind.” The story was also offered as an example of why Islam must engage with the west.  When the sermon was over and the formal prayers began, most of us were escorted from the mosque. Only Omar, Sommer and Sanaz were permitted to stay.

As we stood outside listening to Bitar’s translation, the class reassembled, although we looked nothing like we did when parting before services. With the exception of Sommer, who brought her own headscarf, all our group’s women wore white, full-body costumes that our friends from the Jordan Media Institute bought for us.  We men, on the other hand, looked no different, the result of relaxed rules for men. Inside the mosque, from our seat in the back on the striped red and white carpet, Josh and I recognized clothes we would have expected to see in Central Park in July: “Speed Racer” and “Manny Ramirez” t-shirts that fully exposed the worshipers’ arms, lots of jeans, and lots of short-sleeved polo shirts.

After Bitar’s translation, we headed back into the mosque to speak to Professor Hamdi Murad, an Islamic scholar.  Goldman quickly took the chance to ask Murad and a mosque representative why we were asked to leave. “In America, non-Muslims are permitted to stay during prayer,” Goldman pointed out. After much digression by Murad, who spoke extensively about peace, love, and having a clean heart but addressed few of the specifics of extremism. We came out knowing no more about our early exit than we did before.

We talked about why we were asked to leave as we walked to the bus. It was strange that a service dedicated to togetherness would include a moment of deliberate separation. Some of us speculated that our status as mosque outsiders limited our access to the ceremony, which ends before prayer. Others said the mosque was taking a precautionary step to reserve enough space for believers to worship. The consensus seemed to be that it was a cultural decision, a way of keeping prayer among people familiar with the faith—although anyone who wanted to stay, conceivably, could have.

Over a traditional Jordanian lunch – hummus, babaganoush, lamb, orange and mango juice – Anisa Mehdi, a J School grad who is spending the year in Jordan as a  Fulbright scholar, was clearly upset that they asked us to leave, emphasizing that she’d never seen anything like it ever happen  in the United States. Our classmate Mamta was unsurprised by the mosque’s decision, arguing religious establishment should be able to have some control over its services. “I wouldn’t be offended if they asked me to step out,” she said. “In Bombay, I wasn’t allowed into synagogues when I was a journalist.”

Mostly, though, the women were taken aback by the full-body costume they’d just stepped out of. A few hours later, as we walked through Amman’s souk, Dean Huff took in her experiences. “I’ve been to a lot of mosques and this amount of coverage was new to me.” Caroline, walking beside Huff, added her reaction. “I was surprised,” she said. “Being raised Presbyterian. There really wasn’t anything special I wore to church. Just khakis and pants sometimes.”

As I narrowly dodged fast-talking, bustling fruit vendors, shouting taxi drivers and old men sitting in the street, stretched out and smoking hookahs, Mamta and I spoke more. “I thought I was fine wearing what I was,” she said, now back in her street clothes, a Kurta, a traditional Indian shirt; a pink scarf, which she’d planned to wear as hijab; jeans; and sandals.

It was late afternoon. I watched a kid who couldn’t have been more than 10 push a handcart through traffic and put a minivan to a screeching halt. I watched a guy get an afternoon shave by hand with a blade. Most of us had decided to put our group unity on hold momentarily and meander through the streets in smaller groups.

The Muslim call to prayer would soon begin broadcasting from the minarets throughout the city, reaching everyone no matter where they’d wandered. People were hanging out on the street and on apartment balconies, drinking coffee and sugarcane juice. Hundreds of three- and four-story sandstone apartment buildings surrounded us—many showing wear, some built into hillsides. We passed the ruins of an amphitheater standing beside giant placards for political leaders and a group of kids playing soccer on a wide sidewalk and got back on the bus to the hotel.

Omar, who lives in Jordan, not far from the King Hussein Bin Talal Mosque, put our mosque experience in perspective. “It was pretty low-key,” he said. “There were kids there who just follow their parents. They see their dad genuflect, and then they do the same.” He emphasized the mosque’s conservative nature. “Expect it to be more temperate because King’s office is right next door. It’s the nicest mosque in Amman.”

At 8 p.m., we joined students from the Jordan Media Institute for dinner. Some of the questions I had about the relative extremism of Islam were all but stowed away for the night. As I sat down, I started talking to a student on my right. He said he was a radio producer and announcer and his last show had covered the recent rise and fall in employment. Most of us at the table were getting into more meaty conversations after getting through awkward talk about close-up shots, American movies, and Jordanian internet laws, but he was clearly closed off. Finally, the radio journalist  started talking about what was on his mind. He pointed to one of our female colleagues, who sat a few seats to his right, and shook his head. He didn’t approve of what she was wearing, a dress that exposed her shoulders. He said that if anyone ordered a beer he would leave.

A few minutes later, as we all got up to eat from a traditional Jordanian buffet, he made a bee line for the exit. At another table, some beers had been ordered. One point against togetherness for the day.

When we came back to the table, the other JMI students regarded what had happened with respectful disagreement. One student called him an extremist but said that his beliefs were common among Jordanian youth, and estimated that 15 to 20 percent would have made the same decision. Another disagreed, and said he was a fundamentalist. He added that in the last few years more pious religious belief is on the rise.

We got back into lighter conversation and mostly forgot about the other student. At our table, we had water, delicious food, but no alcohol. We exchanged phone numbers. A few hours later, some of us met up at a Hookah bar and had drinks.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 13th, 2010 at 2:18 am and is filed under Daily Dispatches and tagged with Amman, Daily Dispatch, jordan, Jordanian Media Institute, Lim Wui Liang, Sam Petulla. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.