Call to regain honor and about gradual corruption of soul - Message not only to Jordanian society

Though this message is dedicated to Jordanian society as a whole, its lessons apply to many countries, not just in the Arab world. I’ve seen these issues stand out strongly in Jordan, which is why I feel compelled to address it here directly.

I spent just over a month in your country, closely observing how it functions and how its people live—sometimes as a naive tourist, other times pretending to be one, volunteering at a Jordanian hotel, or speaking with locals about their experiences here. These experiences gave me diverse perspectives on the life here. Before diving into why I believe that honor is lacking in many Jordanians I encountered, first let’s define what it means to me.

To me, honor is an abstract internal feeling with beneficial external outcomes to oneself and the society as a whole. A sense of honor for self is gained through long-term actions—actions that are performed with integrity to what is true and right. While some can argue that “what is right” can be very subjective to one’s upbringing, it is my belief that while there is a lot to societal programming of every single one of us, we all have an innate moral compass encoded in us, which in reality is the voice of God talking to us. It tells us when an action is right and when it’s wrong. It is that little voice telling us not to do something, even though it might be societally acceptable, beneficial to us, but clearly wrong or the exact opposite, calling for an action, when it might seem not beneficial to us, but it is still the right thing to do. This inner voice is just a part of what I call intuition. Unfortunately, similarly to the rest of our intuition, this inner moral compass is also often ignored, to the point where deeply broken people have mostly stopped hearing it at all.

I noticed the corruption in Jordanian society very early on, when I started working at the hotel I already mentioned. While on the surface it would call itself honorable, saying they are trying to protect their guests from scams while offering them their trips, the hotel itself would try to scam its customers by promoting visiting the Dead Sea through beach resorts with an entrance fee, while lying to them that all of the free-to-enter beaches are closed off to the public, when this was not the case. Ever since that moment, I couldn’t trust anything the manager said in regards to the trips they offered, as well as I was dubious of other things he said too. That’s what spotting lack of honor does, and I would call such behavior nothing less than simple stealing. What else can it be since you are just tricking people into a monetary gain?

This type of corruption I saw or heard about in other instances too: car rentals and their many extra hidden charges, taxi drivers wanting unfair tolls, Wadi Rum camps, border crossing transporters asking additional money for “baggage protection“, local marketeers taking advantage of foreigners not knowing the language or local prices, and more, to the point where I wonder whether this is not only isolated to the tourists, but whether many Jordanians don't apply this behavior towards other Jordanians as well? When confronting one marketeer about him selling me twice his tomatoes for four times the actual price, I gave him a chance to make it right. He called me a donkey instead, so I called him a thief, because that’s what he in fact is. No wonder he got so angry, as deep inside he knew I was right; if he is doing this to tourists, he is just taking advantage of them. While I lost in total about half a dollar, he lost his honor in my eyes. Honorable is to give the tourist a fair price even though it might make you a donkey in greedy people’s eyes.

For an honorable person, money or outside opinion is never more important than doing what is right. There is a place for trade and negotiating a good price for goods, but if you are asking for four times the actual fair price, it is just theft, plain and simple. These people just take advantage of tourists not being ingrained within the community, since they think their voice won’t hurt them in the long run, as if they would do the same to a local. But little do they know that by such behavior, they actually hurt the whole Jordanian community reputation and, therefore, they steal and hurt all Jordanian people just for their own short-term benefit, as foreigners will less likely do business or travel here due to the perception of being likely scammed.

Another type of corruption I heard about in Jordanian society, and which is apparently highly prevalent, is state corruption in the form of bribes. I will not go deeper into it as I only know about it from Jordanians themselves, and you must know about it more than me anyway, but what I want to do is pose a question that I don’t know the answer to. While in Egypt I have rarely seen scammy behavior from non-government Egyptians, since I’ve seen it here more often, I wonder whether the corruption in Jordan isn’t actually bottom-up? The system in here is similarly free to many european countries, and while the economic situation isn’t the greatest, it doesn’t make it right to deceive your customers like in the hotel I mentioned or try to squeeze out every penny from unknowing tourists in the market.

There is a reason why the Quran tried to warn you of corruption and haram money, as seen, for example in Surah 83:1-3, 2:188, 5:38-39, and more, as such soul-corruptive behavior, once settled in, opens up doors to other, even bigger crimes like betrayal and hurts the society as a whole.

While corruption is a highly dishonorable behavior, it is not the only one I spotted in Jordan. Another instance of such behavior is something that I believe is a global issue of today, as I have seen such behavior, for example, in Western internal corporate environments, but it is also prevalent in many regular human relationships all around us. And that is passive-aggressive indirectness when trying to solve a conflict between parties or, sometimes even worse, trying to completely avoid it altogether by not speaking about the problem at all.

While the first one is disrespectful to the other party, the other one is disrespectful to both parties. Both are, in my opinion, highly dishonorable, as they stem from a lack of courage to voice one’s problem with another directly and this behavior eventually only makes conflicts bigger, creates grievances, and such behavior rarely allows for peaceful resolution or correction of the behavior, no matter who has been wronged at the start.

When talking about courage, another utmost dishonorable behavior of Jordanian past must be addressed, and that is betrayal. While I see the whole world as my extended family, I believe that Muslims are to at least see their brothers and sisters in religion as their extended family. At least that’s how I understand what the meaning of the word “Umma” is supposed to be. What else other than a betrayal towards Palestinians was the Jordanian behavior in 1948? Instead of using your military strength to alter the course of the ethnic cleansing, you chose to fight only in the areas you sought to secure for yourselves, despite being well-mechanized and, by many historians, the strongest force on the ground at the time.

While I will not comment on current Jordanian foreign and domestic politics, as I made a promise not to do so to the security services of Jordan for the time I stay here, you be the judge of the current behavior of Jordan towards Palestine and Israel and ask yourself whether it is not similar to the one in 1948.

No matter what the behavior was up until this point, I have good and bad news for you. So, let’s start with the bad one: I am almost certain that the Palestinian-Israeli ceasefire will not hold for long, which means that the Israeli genocide of Palestinians will continue, even though I would argue that it never stopped, and it just moved to the West Bank. The good news is that this will be a great opportunity for Jordan as a country to regain its honor, as that will be an exemplary opportunity for Jordanian people to stand up for their brothers and sisters in Palestine. Due to my promise, I will again refrain from any specifics, but instead, I will quote Prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him) words to you: “Whoever among you sees an evil, let him change it with his hand. If he cannot do so, then with his tongue. If he cannot do so, then with his heart—that is the weakest level of faith.” And I believe that Jordan has the power to change this evil with their hand, tongue and heart.

At the end, I would like to say that I have also met with many honorable Jordanians here, and I hope that my impression of the people here has been just overblown by some unfortunate experiences, but remember, with honor, it is very similar to trust; it is easily lost, and once lost, it is hard and takes time to regain back again. I know it very well as I lost it myself in the past and took me a long while before I felt like I regained it.

While Allah is trully All-aware and the most righteous among you, it is never too late to start walking the righteous path to get closer to him.