Jordanian Islam: The Nationalisation of Higher Islamic Education Within State Religious Policies

Abstract

Contrary to states such as Egypt or Morocco, the Jordanian state could not rely on long-lasting Islamic tradition and institutions at its creation and was exposed to the religious influence of its neighbours. The regime had to “invent” a Jordanian religious tradition, making Jordan a particularly interesting case for the study of the development of Islamic policies—central to a regime that significantly relies on religious legitimacy. This contribution based on fieldwork in Amman dives into the nationalisation of the Islamic education of Jordanian imams and preachers as a component of official Islam. It argues that the nationalisation of higher Islamic education is a crucial element of state control over religion and is inscribed in the regional competition over religious influence as much as in international considerations. It contributes to improving our understanding of the entanglement of the domestic promotion of official Islam and regional fight for religious influence.

1. Introduction

Contrary to states such as Egypt or Morocco, the Jordanian state could not rely on long-lasting Islamic tradition and institutions at its creation and it was exposed to the religious influence of its neighbours. The regime had to “invent” a Jordanian religious tradition, which makes Jordan a particularly interesting case for the study of the development of Islamic policies. This contribution dives into the nationalisation of higher Islamic education as a component of official Islam in Jordan. Most existing research tends to present official Islam—defined according to Robbins and Rubin (2017, p. 367) as “the elements of religious authority that are under the direct or indirect control of the regime”—as conducted by ministries and religious elites’ actions at the service of the regime or the state. Insufficient attention is given to where those actors develop their religious ideas or more specifically, where they receive their Islamic education. In addition, the academic literature tends to focus on the dialogue between official Islam and international considerations such as the fight against extremism but often neglects the regional context. This contribution argues that the nationalisation of higher Islamic education is a crucial element of official Islam and is inscribed in the (often forgotten) regional competition over religious influence as much as in international considerations. Therefore, the author attempts to answer the following question: “How and why is the Jordanian regime striving to control higher Islamic education?” The answer to this question contributes to discussions over state control over religion and inter-state competition for religious influence. It contributes to improving our understanding of the entanglement of the domestic promotion of official Islam and regional fight for religious influence.

Based on the example of the education of imams and preachers in Jordan, this contribution first highlights relevant studies on official Islam and higher Islamic education and zooms in on the history of higher Islamic education in Jordan, showing the different ways in which the regime nationalised the education of the religious elites. Then, it casts light on the current educational path that imams and preachers must follow to obtain a position and evolve hierarchically within the Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs. Eventually, the article explains why it is crucial for the regime to manage higher Islamic education. It argues that the education of religious elites is a significant component of Jordanian official Islam and is crucial for the control of the domestic religious sphere and the position of the Jordanian regime in the regional competition for religious influence.

This argument is developed based on primary and secondary sources collected for a wider research project. It builds upon the data available in the academic literature and websites and complements the latter with additional information acquired during seven months of fieldwork conducted in Amman in 2022 and 2023. The author gathered written primary sources such as Ministry of Awqaf’s communication with imams and preachers, annual reports, workshops programmes, etc. The author also conducted sixty semi-structured interviews in Arabic with relevant state and religious actors in that period. The interviewees include imams, preachers, university professors, deans of university departments of shariʿa studies, former and current ministers and employees of the Ministry of Awqaf in charge of organising the education of religious civil servants, etc. (see below the list of interviews used in this contribution). Attention was given to the diversity of interviewees and the triangulation of sources. The author interviewed participants from different Sunni schools of law and creeds. Interviews were carried out with imams and preachers who benefitted from the state’s policies as well as others whose interests were hurt or who were banned from preaching; attention was given to meeting men of religion close to the regime as well as others far from the policy-making circle; some interviewees were highly educated and belonged to the higher echelon of civil employment, while others matched the basic education criteria and occupied entry-level positions.

2. Official Islam and Islamic Education

The topic of official Islam has already been addressed in the literature in various ways. As religious actors can overcome social cleavages and constitute large forms of mobilisation that can threaten rulers (Koesel 2014), regimes have tried to keep them under control and tried to steer them to support the state’s policies. While studying the various tools available for the state to monitor religious actors, several authors focus on the bureaucratisation and co-optation of religious elites. Antoun, for instance, argues that “the bureaucratisation of religion focuses on the hierarchicalisation of religious specialists and state co-optation of religion focuses on their neutralisation as political opponents” (Antoun 2006, p. 369). Those methods can be particularly advantageous for political leaders, as religious institutions can then be incorporated in a state system over time and profit states’ leaders who can consequently have access to a “ready-made, long-standing network of religious institutions going deep into society” (Baskan 2011, p. 138). Such state attempts at bureaucratising Islamic actors into submission are observed by Zeghal (1999) in Egypt, Pierret (2013) in Syria, and Wainscott (2017) in Morocco. This article inscribes itself within this body of literature, based on the Jordanian example.

In 2017, Wainscott wrote that only Saudi Arabia and Iran presented cases of official Islam that were as well-developed as the Moroccan example. She further advanced that “among these three [states], Morocco is unique for its self-conscious emphasis on ‘moderation’” (Wainscott 2017, p. 71). Yet, in 2017, official Islam was already quite “well-developed” in Jordan, as will be seen below, and moderation was clearly one of its central themes. Similar dynamics unfold in Jordan but remain understudied or completely ignored although apprehending them would inform our understanding of official Islam policies and would have comparative value. The Jordanian case also provides an interesting entry in the regional fight for religious influence. The regional dimension of official Islam has frequently been neglected in scholarly analyses, overshadowed by a focus on its instrumentalisation in counterterrorism campaigns or in survival strategies designed to neutralise domestic opposition (Robbins and Rubin 2013, p. 60). While the latter are indeed central contextual elements, they should not eclipse regional considerations.

With regard to Jordan, the regime has invested significant resources in developing Jordanian official Islam (Robbins and Rubin 2013). The Hashemite royal family has counted on religion to legitimate itself since the establishment of the Emirate of Transjordan in the 1920s (Jolen 2003). King Abdullah II (r. 1999–) is a descendant of the Hashemite clan and the Quraysh tribe of the Prophet Muhammad (Alon 2007, p. 2). Since the creation of the state, the Hashemite monarchy has played a special role in the custodianship of the holy sites in Jerusalem, including the third holiest site in Islam, al-Haram al-Sharif (Katz 2003), and has used this role to claim religious legitimacy in the region. This reliance on religion explains the importance the regime gives to the control over the religious message spread within and beyond the Jordanian borders. It makes Jordan an interesting case for the study of state control over religion and inter-state competition over religious authority. Among various policies designed to develop and promote Jordanian Islam, the regime invested in the creation of religious state institutions and turned all Jordanian imams into civil servants. It has also gradually increased its control over the topic of the Friday sermon (Wiktorowicz 2001, pp. 55–57), imposed the latter’s topic at the national level in 2017 (Bourlond 2025) and reduced access to Jordanian pulpits to foreign preachers.1 In 2022, the regime went further and started regulating the lessons taught by preachers inside and outside Jordanian mosques.2 This enabled the leaders to ensure that religious actors would not act in ways clashing with the regime’s domestic and regional political interests and that the state-sponsored interpretation of Islam would prevail.

Zooming in on the more specific issue of Islamic education, some contributions to the debate on official Islam identify the education of the religious state elites as one of the constitutive elements of official Islam, but very few study it in depth. This is the case of Pierret who focuses on the case of Syria and highlights the importance of the creation of Syrian institutes for the training of men of religion after 2008 as part of a new state policy of direct control over the Sunni religious field (Pierret 2013, p. 83). Wainscott identifies similar policies in Morocco and rightly argues that “the bureaucratisation of religion necessitates control over the means of producing religious elites” (Wainscott 2017, p. 180). She further highlights how the Moroccan state trains religious elites in a particular way, with the objective of employing them and making them contribute to the realisation of the state’s official religion (Wainscott 2017, p. 183). Yet, Wainscott focuses on the inscription of this state control on the international scene and the “war on terror.” Robbins and Rubin focus on post-Arab uprisings’ developments and identify cooperation for the training of imams and preachers between Morocco and other states (Robbins and Rubin 2017, p. 372). Yet, none of them focuses on the inscription of those educational policies in the regional fight for religious influence.

As far as Jordan is concerned, although attention has been given to the above-mentioned aspects of Jordanian official Islam, others have only been touched upon and deserve more attention, and the management of imams and preachers is one such topic. Within this subject, the religious education of those actors has been largely ignored. Yet, education is crucial in the elaboration of the religious elite’s Islamic vision. Before the religious elite shares the state-sponsored interpretation of Islam, its members must acquire a relatively high level of religious knowledge. The regime is thus giving due attention to their education, before their employment and throughout their career, to ensure that they develop the desired understanding of Islam and share it within and beyond the borders of the country. To do so, the regime supports religious actors whose religious views fit with its political objectives. This will be studied in the coming paragraphs.

3. The History of Islamic Education in Jordan

To develop a better grasp of the increased control exerted by the regime over the education of imams and preachers, one must understand the Jordanian context. During the first five decades of the state of (Trans)Jordan, the regime did not intervene in the religious sphere extensively. The recently created state lacked a pre-existing central religious establishment or tradition. While some minimal degree of involvement took place, such as the creation of the Fatwa Department (1921) when the Emirate was founded, political actors refrained from resorting to highly intrusive techniques of control vis-a-vis the religious actors. As republican Arab nationalism rose in the region under the Egyptian leadership in the 1960s, the regime found an ally in the Muslim Brotherhood to defend its conservative model (Abu Rumman and Abu Hanieh 2013, p. 44). Then, from the 1980s onwards, the regime increasingly invested the religious scene and developed Jordanian Islam. This is explained by various regional and domestic factors. First, the Iranian Revolution of 1979 created a precedent of a successful overthrow of a conservative monarchy and triggered the regime’s fear of increased politicisation of Islam (Wagemakers 2022, p. 345). It gave an example of what the Jordanian regime sought to avoid: religious actors leaving the strictly defined religious sphere to step into high politics. Beyond this turning point, the end of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in 1989 and the return of the “Afghan Arabs” in their respective countries, including Jordan (Wagemakers 2016, p. 181), reinforced the regime’s fears in the following years. Most of those “returnees” were bearing militant interpretations of Islam, which the regime was wary about and whose spread in Jordan it firmly tried to limit. Domestic challenges, including deep economic difficulties encountered over decades created instability and led to riots in the country (major ones took place in 1989) (Lucas 2005, p. 26). These events affected the regime, further encouraging the latter to seek certainty in other fields, including the religious one. Yet, not all religious movements were aligned with the regime’s policies. For instance, the 1994 peace treaty with Israel engendered hostile reactions, including demonstrations organised by the Muslim Brothers who considered that the agreements did not represent the will of the people (Ashton 2008, p. 308).

This context confirmed the inclination of the regime to consolidate its grip over religious actors. Over time, the regime invested in the religious sphere in different ways to gain control over what religious message was rising in Jordan, how it was shared, and by whom. What made Jordan special is that since it was artificially established by external powers, it lacked the “raw material of statehood” (Robins 2019, p. 16), including a Jordanian equivalent to al-Azhar or al-Qarawiyyin. Contrary to states such as Egypt or Morocco, (Trans)Jordan could not rely on a long-lasting indigenous academic tradition and institutions; nationals had to travel abroad to study religion, which significantly hindered state control. The regime did have a special role as guardian of some of the holy sites in Jerusalem (including al-Aqsa Mosque) and could have hired religious scholars from the third holiest city institutions but chose not to do so for political reasons. Even after Jordan annexed the West Bank in 1950 (Yitzhak 2019, p. 226), the regime always maintained Jerusalem subordinated to Amman, in part to keep the Palestinian opposition against the regime under control. In this context, the royal family took it upon itself to develop Jordanian religious institutions (Jolen 2003, p. 177) and to conceive a Jordanian tradition ex nihilo, turning Jordan into a particularly relevant case for the study of the development of Islamic education.

The first shariʿa college was established as an independent entity in 1964, then integrated to the University of Jordan in 1971. The landscape of the universities where one could study a Bachelor in Shariʿa in Jordan changed radically during the last few decades, especially in the 1990s and 2000s. Nearly all the Jordanian Shariʿa colleges were established in the 1990s under the reign of King Hussein (r.1953–1999). He established religious departments and colleges in state universities (Yarmouk and Aal al-Bayt) as well as private ones (Jerash, Applied Science University (ASU), Zarqa, and Mutah). The case of the Aal al-Bayt University is particularly telling and illustrates the regime’s attempts at managing religious education in Jordan. The university was established in 1992 by a royal decree and its management was entrusted to Prince Hassan (son of King Talal, r. 1951–1953) (Aal al-Bayt University 2023). It was created as an institution teaching religion only, which made it an exception. This evolved over time as the Aal al-Bayt University established non-religious departments.3 Yet, it was a first attempt at creating a university fully focused on religion, which would be repeated less than two decades later with the World Islamic Sciences and Education University (WISE), as further detailed below.

Until the creation of those institutions, most Jordanians who wanted to study Islam left the country and went to study at foreign universities, mainly in Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and later in Saudi Arabia. They were coming back influenced by what they had learned in those countries and bearing interpretations of Islam that were at times clashing with the preferences of the regime.4 With the establishment of Jordanian shariʿa colleges, the education of the religious elite was nationalised; students did not need to go abroad to study religion anymore, making it easier for the state to monitor them. Jordanian curricula were designed for those new institutions. In that period, students learned about all the Islamic schools of law and compared their jurisprudence.

Then, the terrorist attacks that took place in the United States in September 2001 attracted the international public’s gaze on Islam and its representatives and fuelled the interstate regional competition to appear as champions of religious moderation, as opposed to violent extremists. State education efforts progressively took a more ideological turn. It became crucial for the regime to make sure that Jordanian Islamic elites participated in broadcasting the state-sponsored religious image of Jordan. It gave more space to quietist Salafis for them to counter the politicisation of Islam and “extremist” interpretations (Abu Rumman et al. 2023). Domestic security-related events, including the terrorist suicide bombings that took place in hotels in Amman in 2005 and led to the death of dozens of people, reinforced the regime’s determination to increasingly monitor religious actors (Abu Rumman and Abu Hanieh 2013, pp. 68–69). Soon after the events, various core policies of the regime took a sharp turn toward more control over the society, including the religious field within it (e.g., the Anti-Terrorism Law of 2006). In this context, the religious education landscape was completed with the establishment of WISE in 2007, which epitomises the efforts of the Jordanian regime in terms of higher religious education but which has not received due attention in the academic literature. The university was created out of the Islamic college of Al-Balqa University (HRH Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad bin Talal 2013, p. 50) under the leadership of Prince Ghazi (Advisor to King Abdullah II on Religious Affairs 2011–),5 who remains the head of the Board of Trustees of the university and nominates its president.6 WISE is a very specific case as it has separate departments for different Islamic schools of law. The students, instead of starting by studying Islamic law from a general perspective and then potentially specialising in one of the schools of law, are invited to choose one of the schools of law from the beginning of their studies. WISE’s Shafiʿi college is clearly the largest and dominates over the Hanafi and Maliki departments.7

With the series of uprisings in the region in the 2010s collectively known as the “Arab spring,” the regime came to the conclusion that quietist Salafis had not been able to produce a convincing discourse to counter more political interpretations of Islam and that they themselves could become politicised (Abu Rumman et al. 2023). Its policies became even more strongly ideologically oriented as it turned towards Ashʿari-Sufis and reinforced the role of Prince Ghazi and WISE, known to represent this Islamic current. WISE university now plays a central role in the education of the Jordanian religious elites, as will be shown below.

4. The Trajectory of Islamic Education for Jordanian Imams and Preachers

Future imams and preachers figure among the religious elites studying in this web of higher Islamic education institutions developed in recent decades and have an important role in the success of the promotion of official Islam. After establishing the institutions in which they would study, the regime clarified the education criteria imams and preachers should satisfy to access state positions. All imams and preachers must be hired by the state in Jordan and around 3500 imams are currently employed as civil servants by the Ministry of Awqaf (Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs 2023). Alternative types of employment exist and modestly increase this number, yet they exceed the scope of the present article (although they deserve proper academic attention). What matters here, however, is that no imam or preacher can work without satisfying the state’s (educational) criteria, although the rule seems to spare some older religious figures and are much clearer as far as imams are concerned.8

First, the regime clarified the entry requirements for imams to apply through the Civil Service Bureau to become a religious civil servant. Although religious employees have been hired by the state since the creation of Transjordan, the criteria to obtain these positions and progress along the hierarchical ladder have changed over time and the application of the rules has been increasingly controlled. Currently, the state requires all candidates to any religious position within the state to hold a degree in Islamic theology. This degree is received after the completion of a two-year study programme and allows a candidate-imam to reach the entry-level for civil servants, the ninth level of the hierarchy of the Civil Service Bureau (CSB).9 If, however, candidates have a higher level of education (bachelor’s, master’s, or PhD), they can directly access a higher echelon of employment.10 In any case, a degree is required as evidence of a certain level of theoretical knowledge about Islam and its legal aspects. Preachers are also hired by the Ministry of Awqaf, but not through the CSB and they do not respond to the same criteria. The state strongly favours hiring candidates who do have a degree for this position—“the higher the better”11—but the rules are not as clear as those that apply to imams.

Beyond the degree required to apply for a religious position in the Ministry of Awqaf, the state has developed trainings and continued education programmes for the imams and preachers who have already been hired. These programmes target recent recruits and employees who wish to climb the hierarchical ladder of state employment. If they attend such training, the imams who enter the Ministry of Awqaf at the ninth level of the CSB hierarchy (the entry level) after achieving their two-year studies, can later reach the level of their colleagues who obtained a master’s or PhD degree. To do so, the employees need five years of experience in each employment level of the CSB to be promoted. They must also attend a fixed number of hours of training specifically designed for their level of employment.12 Even though it can bridge the gap between civil servants who studied for two years and those who obtained a bachelor’s, a master’s, or a PhD degree, this complementary education differs greatly from university programmes, as will be shown below.

First, the training and classes are not necessarily taught at university. They are mainly managed by the King Abdullah II Institute for the Preparation, Training and Rehabilitation of the Preachers and Imams (hereunder Abdullah II Institute).13 The institute, established in 2007, is the result of a reshuffling of the Abdullah Centre,14 which had been created in the 1980s,15 in the context of the beginning of the increasing state intervention in the religious sphere. The current Abdullah II Institute was created in the same year as WISE, showing a wide enterprise of reorganisation of the education programmes for (future) religious staff at the national level. While the entry-level education for imams was provided by institutions registered at the Ministry of Higher Education, this continued education takes place under the umbrella of the Ministry of Awqaf, with a small exception: the Centre for the Rehabilitation of Imams and Preachers16 created at WISE in 2013. Yet, most actors in the Jordanian religious field ignore its existence or do not grant it any importance, since the Abdullah II Institute is clearly more active and attracts most imams and preachers. The centre at WISE is sometimes perceived as an attempt by Prince Ghazi at extending his control over the follow-up education of imams and preachers, as part of a competition for influence with the Ministry of Awqaf.17 The accent will be placed on the training offered by the Abdullah II Institute given its far larger impact. It is interesting to note that yet other courses for hired imams and preachers do take place at WISE and are taught by the university’s professors, but they are the result of agreements between the university and the Ministry of Awqaf. These specific classes are designed and paid for by the Ministry for its employees and are more theoretical than those offered at the Abdullah II Institute and WISE’s centre.18

According to the argument of employees involved in the design of the programmes for the training of the imams and preachers taking place at the Abdullah II Institute, these classes aim at raising awareness on social issues and filling a gap by providing skills that have not been acquired by a large share of the Awqaf employees before they were hired. They argue that no matter how much knowledge about religion imams and preachers acquired at university, many of them remain incapable of transmitting their academic knowledge in a clear and convincing way. Some preachers and imams struggle in simplifying their knowledge, others do not possess a sufficient linguistic level, while others lack charisma or eloquence.19 Some interviewees partly ascribed this to the fact that imams and preachers’ positions would be (financially) less rewarding than working for the Ministry of Justice or the Fatwa Department, which attract the most brilliant students after graduation.20 The regime has thus stepped in and developed those continued education programmes to remedy the weaknesses of the Awqaf employees that constituted barriers to the transmission of official Islam by the religious elite to the population and abroad.

In terms of content, the training offered at the Abdullah II Institute and WISE focus on the acquisition of skills and values rather than academic or religious knowledge. Their courses are centred around the understanding of the role of religion in society, persuasion, communication, and linguistic skills. Classes such as Communication skills, Preaching skills, Public speaking, Tajwid, or Islamic English are taught at the Abdullah II Institute.21 Contrary to the colleges of WISE, based on different schools of law, the Abdullah II Institute neither focuses on fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) nor differentiates between different specialisations in terms of Islamic law. A former high-ranking member of the Abdullah II Institute still told the author that, “naturally,” when tackling personal status laws, the classes were Hanafi-oriented, as it is the school of law applicable to personal status issues in Jordanian courts. The classes taught at institute related to other matters lean toward the Shafiʿi school, as do Jordanian institutions and society in general.22 The specific courses that take place at WISE under the agreement made with the Ministry of Awqaf also generally follow the Shafiʿi school of law.23 Those two entities thus follow the line of the state in terms of schools of law and concur with official Islam.

In addition to regular courses organised at the Abdullah II Institute and WISE, the Ministry of Awqaf also created the Fora for Preaching and Guidance in the governorates.24 While both WISE and the Abdullah II Institute are in Amman, these fora organised by the Ministry take place all over the Kingdom. The Awqaf Ministry organises around thirty fora per year and each gathers twenty-five to thirty-five imams and preachers. On those occasions, imams and preachers meet colleagues from different regions of Jordan and discuss societal topics. Then, they are invited to teach the local population about the results of their discussions. One of the ideas behind these fora, beyond the sharing of experiences and best practices between civil servants, is to enable citizens to have contacts with imams and preachers originating from other regions than theirs, under the umbrella of the Ministry.25 This participates in the policy of the regime that consists of multiplying the sources of religious discourse to which citizens are exposed and avoid the monopoly of an imam or a preacher over a group of citizens, as further studied below.

5. Jordanian Higher Islamic Education Within the Frame of Official Islam

These policies are particularly interesting if one focuses on their aims. The fact that imams and preachers receive education in the form of university studies, training, workshops, and fora does not constitute anything extraordinary. But if one situates this educational offer within larger debates and keeps in mind the importance of these actors’ influence on the success of the regime’s broader religious policies, the picture changes profoundly. The following paragraphs focus on how the nationalisation of higher Islamic education aims at supporting imams and preachers who are aligned with official Islam and highlight why it is so important for the Jordanian regime.

5.1. Control over the Domestic Diffusion of Jordanian Islam

On the one hand, the creation of shariʿa colleges in Jordan enabled the regime to gain control over imams and preachers in different ways. First, the newly created education institutions allowed the regime to train its own specialists and reduce the number of foreign religious elites preaching in Jordan. In the 1980s, a significant number of Egyptian, Syrian, Iraqi, and Saudi men of religion influenced the Jordanian religious sphere. This regional influence is visible, for instance, in the case of Muhammad Nasir al-Din al-Albani (1914–1999), a major Salafi figure who grew up and studied in Syria and who taught at the Islamic University of Medina (Lacroix 2008, p. 48). He had a major influence on the development of Salafism in Jordan. With the improvement in the national Islamic education system, Jordan became increasingly able to train its own preachers and imams and avoid such cases and rather limit the access to the mosques’ pulpits to its nationals.26 Second, the development of departments representing three Sunni schools of law at WISE partially aims at nationalising Islamic legal specialisations that were hitherto studied abroad.27 It augments the ability of the Jordanian state to maintain its grip over Jordanian experts in these schools. It is an attempt to reduce the number of Jordanians studying abroad and being exposed to alternative educational programmes and undesired interpretations of Islam. Therefore, it reduces the risk of religious men influencing the Jordanian population with foreign-grown ideas.

On the other hand, control over the education of Jordanian imams and preachers is part of a wider enterprise of dissemination of a Jordanian vision of Islam. With the help of this systematised Islamic curricula, the regime makes sure that Jordanian citizens are exposed to the state-sponsored Jordanian Islam. It does so in various ways. First, the regime attempts to lead all its religious employees to agree on similar interpretations of Islam and communicate a “clarified” version of religion to the citizens and to foreign audiences. The organisers of the “training and rehabilitation classes” highlight the reduction in divergence of opinions as a central goal of their programmes.28 Central figures within the regime consider that it is important for the citizens to be exposed to a clear and unified message. This is illustrated by the regime’s programme of Islamic education and its other religious policies, including the mandatory sermon topic sent weekly by the Ministry of Awqaf to all the preachers in Jordan (Bourlond 2025). In addition, the regime uses nationalised Islamic education as a tool to simplify the message of Islam and make it more accessible to the layperson or non-specialised foreign audience. This is reflected in an official declaration published on King Abdullah II (r. 1999–)’s website after his visit at the Abdullah II Institute in which one can read that “His Majesty King Abdullah […] stressed the importance of improving the skills of imams and preachers so that they can better clarify Islam’s message of peace and tolerance and spread the values of justice in the society” (King Abdullah II 2011).

At the core of the “clarified” official Islam promoted by the Jordanian regime through Islamic education lie the values of moderation and tolerance, largely linked to the rejection of takfir (declaring someone a disbeliever) and sectarian conflicts. Those values promoted by Jordanian official Islam are visible in the goals of the various shariʿa faculties and colleges the regime established, which strongly converge in terms of declared visions and missions. At the time of writing, all shariʿa colleges (but one, at ASU) highlight the teaching of moderation and tolerance as one of their core goals on their websites’ homepage. For instance, the Faculty of Shariʿa of the University of Jordan states that its vision is to be “a school that is distinguished in academic and research works both locally and internationally, maintaining moderate Islam” and its mission is to train its students to be “efficient in introducing the values of moderate Islam” (The University of Jordan 2020). It clearly sets “moderate Islam,” i.e., the one promoted by the state, at the centre of its priorities. The core values of tolerance and moderation that occupy a central position in the aims of the shariʿa colleges of nearly all Jordanian universities are also taught at the Abdullah II Institute. There is a continuum between the university education and career-development training, which confirms the idea that a consistent education programme has been designed to square with the wider enterprise of promotion of official Islam. During these lessons, the imams and preachers are taught about the regime’s understanding of moderation, centred around coexistence within and beyond the Islamic world and the rejection of takfir.29 The follow-up workshops and training thus reinforce the message imams and preachers already encountered at university and support the regime’s interpretation of Islam, or at least the one that serves its political interests.

Diving deeper in the content of this simplified interpretation of Islam promoted by the state, one can note that one field is excluded: politics. Most interviewees agreed on the idea that the regime wants imams and preachers to stay out of politics. Yet, a preacher in Amman told the author that the aim of the state Islamic education was the “unification of the imams and preachers’ political ideas” so that a citizen would not receive divergent opinions when asking the same question to different religious civil servants. According to him, as imams and preachers address many people in their mosques, especially on Fridays, it is important for the state to make sure that the ideas conveyed are “correct.” “The idea of the state is to deliver the right political ideas to the preachers so that we [preachers] can deliver them to the people.”30 One might then conclude that the objective of the regime is not to completely prevent religious men from speaking about politics, but to allow them to speak about it only in a conciliatory or loyal way. Indeed, as soon as the message of an imam or a preacher becomes politically troubling for the regime, he is warned by the security services. “Sometimes they [imams and preachers] exit the topic of the unified sermon. But they are punished. Sometimes, if they step out a lot, they are forbidden from preaching. [Author: When you say they step out… what do you mean exactly?] Uh, well… if they speak about politics. If they speak about politics, but not in the way the state wants, then they are punished and forbidden from preaching.”31 Preachers who cross the red line can “be suspended, issued a written warning, banned from delivering Friday sermons for a certain period, or dismissed from the Ministry of Awqaf. In addition to these administrative measures, a preacher who violates the law may be imprisoned for a period of one week to one month” (U.S. Department of State 2022). The higher Islamic education curricula and its simplified Islamic message, reflected in the unified sermon, steer the religious elites out of this field and channels them towards apolitical considerations (Bourlond 2025).

Still, state control is never complete. The Jordanian state occasionally fails to prevent undesired ideas from being shared in its mosques and it happens that an imam or preacher still deviates from official Islam. It would be troubling for the regime if such a man of religion had the monopoly of influence over his followers and the latter were not exposed to alternative discourse. To avoid this situation, the regime designed rules to make imams and preachers rotate from one mosque to another. This policy limits the cases in which a single civil servant is the sole representative of Islam in the eyes of a group of citizens. Local audiences thus attend the lessons, sermons, and prayers of multiple men of religion even if they always go to the same mosque (Wiktorowicz 2001, p. 59). This state policy is strictly implemented at least in the most central mosques in Amman, which attract the largest crowds of mosque-goers and are broadcast on radio and television, while the rule might be more loosely enforced in mosques with smaller audiences. It complements the Islamic education system, including the preaching and guidance fora, and follows the same logic. As mentioned supra, during each forum, participants enter in contact with the population inhabiting the area where the forum takes place to explain the results of their workshops and discussions. This exposes citizens to new imams and preachers, always under the supervision of the Ministry of Awqaf.

5.2. Jordanian Islamic Education and the Regional Competition for Religious Influence

Beyond domestic goals, the nationalisation of Jordanian imams and preachers’ higher Islamic education needs to be studied in the context of an intense competition for influence and religious authority in the region. In these circumstances, the regime aims at attracting foreign students in Jordanian educational institutions; avoiding the presence of foreign imams and preachers; nominating specific personalities within the Islamic education institutions to counter the influence of competing Muslim states and competing to be seen as the best moderate partner in the region on the international scene.

Within this competitive environment, the regime makes efforts to attract foreign students and train them based on the Jordanian religious model, reverting the influence it was exposed to in the past. This resonates with the Moroccan exportation of official Islam through the training of other states’ imams and preachers (Robbins and Rubin 2017, p. 372). The Abdullah II Institute offers international classes, where lectures are taught by Jordanian teachers and specific foreign participants are invited to participate.32 In addition, the dean of one of the three shariʿa departments of WISE explained to the author that the ambition of the university is not only to train Jordanians but also to attract foreign students. The institution created scholarship programmes for international students to study Islam in Jordan. The number of Iraqi students coming to Jordan to study shariʿa increased, especially in the last two decades, since the intensification of the conflicts in their home country.33 If Jordanian institutions prove attractive enough for foreign students, they will represent an opportunity for the regime to export Jordanian official Islam in the region and counter the influence of neighbouring states promoting alternative visions. In addition, as mentioned above, the development of religious education in Jordan provides a pool of eligible applicants to the Ministry of Awqaf. This means that the state does not need to hire religious personnel originating from other states to fill its religious institutions. This is clearly visible in the case of Jordanian mosques: preachers and imams coming from Egypt, Syria, Iraq, or Saudi Arabia, are now exceptions,34 leading to a decrease in influence of those countries in the Jordanian religious sphere. Attracting foreign students but barring the access to foreign imams and preachers are the two sides of the same coin in the competition for regional influence.

This competition for influence through Islamic education institutions is also illustrated by Prince Ghazi’s creation of the International Islamic Integral Professorial Chairs as Islamic trusts (awqaf) in 2011, which promote research to “revive traditional Islamic knowledge” (HRH Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad bin Talal 2013, p. 91). In 2012, two chairs were dedicated to the study of the work of Al-Ghazali and Al-Razi, two Ashʿari and Sufi figures. They must be held by personalities of Ashʿari or Maturidi creed and their board is composed of central Ashʿari-Sufi personalities (Abu Rumman 2020, p. 81). The chairs clash with the vision of other states rivalling for Islamic influence in the region. They provide a pool of specialists and literature to counter the religious discourse that originates from other Muslim states and permeates the Jordanian religious sphere. The Jordanian regime does not “create” those religious views; those scholars take doctrinal matters seriously and are genuinely religiously motivated. In addition, some of the leaders within the regime adhere to their religious views. Yet, the Jordanian regime as a whole supports them mainly because such a religious policy serves its political interests and backs the monarchy in need of legitimation and stability.

This orientation is confirmed by the lack of Hanbali department at WISE. The university offers programmes in Hanafi, Shafiʿi, and Maliki law and leaves out the Hanbali school of law. Various interviewees explained that this was not the consequence of an informed state decision. An imam argued that the university had tried to open a Hanbali department but could not find any Jordanian expert in Hanbali law. He cited a university board member telling him “present me one Jordanian Hanbali expert and I will open a Hanbali department at WISE!” and asserted that “Hanbalism does not exist in Jordan.”35 A professor at WISE mentioned the lack of students interested in Hanbali law and the cost of opening a college for such a limited number of students.36 Yet, other interviewees described the lack of Hanbali department as a conscious decision. For instance, a preacher in Amman explained to the author that “[the rulers] do not like to teach the Hanbali school because it is close to the Salafis. And the Salafis… well you know! Many times, they were the source of extremism.”37 The reason behind the choice not to open a Hanbali department remains debated. Yet, whereas many Jordanians misleadingly entangle Hanbalism, Salafism and (violent) extremism, senior members of the political elite do make a distinction between those concepts. King Abdullah II, in his memoirs, distinguishes extremist takfiris and the broader Salafi movement (King Abdullah II of Jordan 2011, pp. 239–49). Therefore, the Jordanian policies clashing with Salafis and Hanbalis’ interests can hardly be presented as only security oriented. The argument of the lack of Hanbali experts was rejected by the dean of one of WISE’s departments who mentioned that “we [at WISE] don’t have a Hanbali college at the university, but there are specialists of Hanbalism.”38 There remains another explanation, more politically grounded than religiously so, according to which Jordan does not associate Hanbalism with security threats but with Salafi influence, in parts coming from Saudi Arabia. The regime’s wish to reduce the latter would then explain the absence of Hanbali college in Jordan as it struggles to find non-Salafi Hanbali experts, who are particularly difficult to find.

Other state policies confirm this attempt to limit Salafi influence. For instance, the king gave an increasingly important role to his cousin, Prince Ghazi, until his nomination as King’s advisor for religious affairs in 2011. Prince Ghazi holds two PhDs on the theme of love from Cambridge University and al-Azhar (HRH Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad bin Talal 2013) and he is widely recognised as a firm and genuine defender of “moderation and tolerance.” He is said to have Sufi inclinations (Sheline 2020, p. 123) and to be closely linked to esoteric perennialists, who promote the idea of universal and primordial wisdom common to all religions (Pierret 2008, p. 166). Those currents go against the Salafi interpretation of Islam. In Jordanian political circles, the difference made between following the line of Prince Ghazi and being considered by the regime as religiously “moderate” seems to become very thin. The prince’s role in the field of Islamic education is sizeable, including through the creation of the Ashʿari-oriented WISE university and the attribution of scholarships for students of religion. He has a say in the nomination of the state’s most central religious elite including the Grand Mufti and the Chief Islamic Justice. Since the “Arab spring” and the rising state support for Ashʿari-Sufis to the disadvantage of Hanbalis and Salafis, Prince Ghazi orients Jordanian official Islam and supports neotraditionalist Sufi-inclined personalities perceived as less likely to intervene in high politics and known for their regime-friendly orientation.39 During an interview, a banned Salafi preacher pointed to the dismissal of Salafi state religious elites close to Saudi Arabia and their replacement with Ashʿari and Sufi personalities close to Prince Ghazi.40 Such policies confirm the competition against the religious influence of the Salafis, many of whom are Saudi, in the regional religious sphere (notwithstanding the good political relations between the Jordanian and Saudi regimes).

Another illustration of how the nationalisation of higher Islamic education is inscribed in regional considerations is the inter-state competition to be portrayed as the best regional representative of moderate Islam on the international scene. Other states, including the United Arab Emirates, multiply their efforts to be perceived as the strongest promoters of the Islamic moderation and tolerance. As mentioned above, these values are central themes of the state-designed Islamic curricula in Jordan. While domestic goals were highlighted above, the promotion of these values also has regional aspects as it is an integral part of the regional diplomacy of a state with little resources which attempts to present itself as the link between “Islam” and “the West” (Pierret 2008). The nationalised Islamic education programmes are used by the regime to amplify the impact of a series of international initiatives on tolerance and moderation launched over the last two decades. The most well-known initiative is the 2004 Amman Message which goals are described by King Abdullah II as the promotion of the “True Islam [that] enjoins freedom of religion, peace, justice and good-will to non-Muslims” (Amman Message 2023). The Jordanian regime launched a series of other initiatives, including A Common Word Between Us and You (2007) (Pierret 2008) and the World Interfaith Harmony Week (2010) aimed at bringing together representatives of various religions and agreeing on the need for dialogue and tolerance.

Those initiatives are worth mentioning because they are one of the elements at the crossroads of the nationalisation of higher Islamic education and the regional competition for religious influence. At both the Abdullah II Institute and the WISE centre, imams and preachers are taught about the international initiatives of the regime. The training sessions at WISE include skills classes specifically designed to train participants to communicate on the international scene. One of the five declared goals of WISE’s centre is “preparing international scholars who raise the banner of Hashemite moderation in international forums” (World Islamic Sciences & Education University WISE 2023). The Islamic English classes taught at the Abdullah II Institute also reflect the international dimension of religious education.41 The following statement of a Jordanian preacher is very telling: “Every time you climb a step on the ladder, you need to take lessons and you hear discourses from professionals, specialists, technocrats, people who are really specialised. They are people coming, for example, from the army, from the Ministry of Interior, etc. They teach us about international agreements, the country, the image of Jordan, our challenges, etc. What is the image of Jordan in the eyes of the others? What is said about us? What should we do? What is required from us? Then they also teach skills in terms of preaching in itself: how to have an impact, how to be charismatic, etc.”42 This clearly reveals how religious men are trained to portray Jordan in a specific way on the international scene. Those efforts to promote moderation which started at the beginning of the 2000s are amplified by the nationalised Islamic education programmes and are part of a regional inter-state competition to gain the status of “best partner” in the eyes of international partners and donors. They are significant domestically but also matter a great deal for international donors whose help is crucial for the Jordanian regime, which has gone through several economic crises, struggles with unprecedented levels of unemployment, and is in need of legitimacy.

6. Conclusions

This contribution highlights how the Jordanian regime is investing in the nationalisation of the higher Islamic education of imams and preachers as part of its promotion of official Islam. It designed a consistent education programme that starts in Jordanian shariʿa high schools (which had to be left out for conciseness but deserve further attention) and stretches over the whole career of mosques’ personnel. On the one hand, the Jordanian regime invests in the religious education field to better control the domestic diffusion of Jordanian Islam. The development of Jordanian shariʿa university colleges allows for the education of a greater number of imams and preachers, who are then providing a pool of Jordanian applicants for positions within the Ministry of Awqaf and spread a “clarified” and regime-friendly interpretation of Islam. On the other hand, the nationalised religious education enables the regime to train the Jordanian imams and preachers to participate in the competition for religious influence in the Muslim world. It is also used to amplify the results of the efforts of the regime in the regional rivalry to be portrayed as the best representative of “moderate Islam.”

Taking a step back, this contribution adds to the existing literature by establishing more firmly the importance of higher Islamic education as an integral component of official Islam. It confirms the central importance of the inculcation of religious views through a consistent national education system for the success of state control over religion. It also places this aspect of official Islam in its regional context and proves the importance of inter-state competition over religious influence in the design of higher Islamic education curricula and institutions.

The promotion of official Islam and the control over the religious actors is crucial for a regime that significantly relies on religious legitimacy since the establishment of the state and struggles to be a significant player in the region. Yet, it remains a complicated strategy as too tight a grip on religious actors might decrease the latter’s status in the eyes of the laymen and thus their influence and the role they can play at the service of the state. Those religious actors have their own worldview and interests that do not always align with the regime, even when the latter supports their growth for its own political purposes. A detailed analysis of those separate religious interests and bottom-up demands did not fit within the scope of this contribution but this object also deserves academic attention. In addition, the efficiency of the Jordanian regime’s promotion of official Islam is threatened by the shortage of imams and preachers in the country and the latter’s lowered credibility due to their inclusion in the state institutions. Eventually, tensions with regional powers rising from competition for influence in the Muslim world might also turn out to be politically and economically detrimental to the regime. Consequently, these religious policies, in part aimed at securing the position of the regime, might also affect its domestic and international legitimacy negatively. These are considerations worth keeping in mind while approaching official Islam policies and their inscription in regional relations.