Reclaiming Islam in this Summer of Terror

August 31, 2005 – 11:38 am

“It’s good to be alive this morning,” my friend Firas wrote on MSN Messenger. It was the morning of July 23, 2005. The world had just woken up to news of the massive bombs in Sharm Al-Sheikh, a car bomb in the heart of the buzzing night life of Beirut, and various stories related to the hunt for the failed bombers in London. A month later, the news of death and destruction continue unabated, with the latest being a series of rocket attacks in Aqaba that killed a young Jordanian soldier, not to mention the sad monotony of the daily reports on the massacres in Iraq. The mad terrorists are on a roll this
summer, and they seem to be chasing every breath of life on planet earth. Read More »

By Nasser Ali Khasawneh | Posted in current affairs, islam, terrorism | Comments (0)

There Are No Gay Arabs

July 26, 2005 – 12:15 pm

“There are no gay Arabs,” a Saudi friend of mine once said to me over lunch, causing Pepsi to shoot out of my nose.

Now, before I write anything else, I’d have to stress that I like to think myself aware of certain cultural differences that lead to misunderstandings. For example, if any of my high school friends from sunny Charlotte , North Carolina , saw two men from Amman kissing each other on the cheek in greeting, they might instantly decide that some sort of homosexual innuendo has just taken place. Obviously, the Ammanites would have an entirely different view of the situation.

Affectionate behavior between people of the same gender is viewed differently by different eyes. A careful observer needs to have a variety of “eyes” for a variety of occasions. Read More »

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in humor, islam, jordan, society | Comments (1)

The Right Thing for the Wrong Reasons

June 19, 2005 – 12:13 pm

It seems that the majority of people in Amman have made the connection between so-called “massage parlors” and prostitution. Yet the comments being made in favour of closing down these establishments betray a lack of understanding of what’s really happening. Public figures relish the chance to harp on about the “destruction of the moral fabric of society,” making the prostitutes scapegoats and keeping real issues of poverty and injustice obscured beneath a pile of self-righteous rhetoric.

It’s no secret that Jordan wishes to continue to attract more tourists with money to spend. Both its location and comparatively liberal governing establishment make it an optimal vacation spot, especially for rich Saudi men sorely in need of a break from strict social norms. If anything, the flesh market in Jordan is going to grow, not subside. And while the Jordanian economy (hopefully) continues to expand, trafficking of women from poorer countries is going to grow. Read More »

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in jordan, society | Comments (0)

Dressing Dangerously

June 16, 2005 – 12:13 pm

I can’t take the bus. The revelation is one of several that hit me on my first day of walking around Amman, Jordan . It was oddly painful. Having been a resident of car-culture obsessed North Carolina for a long time, I always get an adrenaline rush when using the public transportation system of a major city. I haven’t been able to afford a car for the past couple of years, and the freedom that public transportation would normally provide is exhilarating. Even though I hardly speak any Arabic, I had somehow imagined that commuting in Amman would be easier than this. Read More »

By Natalia Antonova | Posted in jordan, society, travel | Comments (0)

A Culture of Hate and Death

November 16, 2004 – 11:37 am

(This article will be published in the December issue of Living Well magazine in Jordan)

I’m going to be very frank. Self-delusion and fear of the truth had eventually cost us too many beautiful lives on that grim Wednesday night. But unless we face the distressing facts, we should expect more terrible surprises. My patient editor always advises me that readers of Living Well magazine generally don’t expect to read about religion or politics – and to her dismay, I have since found it almost impossible to write anything not related to either facets of our lives. I think this escapist Jordanian phenomenon is symptomatic of our dangerous head-in-the-sand attitude. Very few people are actually willing to acknowledge that religion and politics are, whether we like it or not, deeply intermingled in dominating every single breath we take in every second of our existence in this plagued part of the world. Even fewer are those ready to confront the lethal outcome of mixing the two by illiterate dropouts who believe they hold, and can bestow upon others, the keys to paradise. Until our 11/9, that is. Read More »

By Zaid Nabulsi | Posted in current affairs, jordan, terrorism | Comments (0)