Middle East Focus: Chatting and Sinning in Jordan, The Joys of Being Surly on a Desert Island……..

Arabia Deserta

Chatting and Sinning in Jordan, The Joys of Being Surly on a Desert Island……..

“An official fatwa in Jordan bans online chatting between the sexes, including Instant messages. Even when the parties chat about religious matters. The fatwa came in an answer toa query about whether ‘it is permissible for girls and boys to IM about religious matters. (Yeah, right, when was the last time any of you chatted or IM’d about a religious matter). The fatwa said that some of these chats lead to forbidden love and even to serious sin. The fatwa noted that innocent chat often leads to admiration and adoration, and in most cases Satan opens the door open for loose talk about love and then there will be appointments and sinning. The Fatwa Department is the only authority in Jordan that can issue fatwas…...…. A professor of Islamic Shari'a at Jordanian University disgrees and contends that there is no problem with intergender chatting or IMing. On the other hand, Communications and Media Professor Arkoub of Jordanian University agreed with the fatwa, saying that proper chat or IM should be between a man and another man (or a woman and another woman)…….... He said technology is a two-edged sword…...….” Aljazeera

Two-edged indeed; apparently so is chatting and IM-ing, because it takes at least two to tango, even in Jordan. Well, we know where that professor of communications stands on the issue of same-sex chatting if not love. He probably doesn’t even IM his wife or girlfriend, if he’s got one. But that doesn’t tell us much about the guys who dispensed the fatwa: I bet they think online chatting is like hooking up- Jordanian style.

Jordanian are widely known as a humorless people, and rightly so. They tend to be rather surly, although I have met one or two who actually smiled a couple of times. Or maybe only one of them smiled, and the other just grimaced, or smirked. I could never figure out what that one smiled about, though. That doesn’t mean they are bad, it just means that when it comes to being abandoned on a desert island…….
Cheers
mhg
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