"Oh, the Places You'll Go!": Haram with a side of Haram

Howdy,

Today was a fun day. We had a guest lecturer that talked about social change in Jordan. Dr. Badr alMadi specifically talked about women's issues. We learned facts such as 70% of the students at the University of Jordan are women, but only 17% of the Jordanian workers are women. It is believed that more women are attending college in Jordan because they want to express themselves through education. The government is now trying to promote women to enter the workforce. They have the education, but just are not working at the time being. Topics such as birthcontrol also came up. The Jordanian government has interpreted Islamic law in a way that allows women to take contraceptives. However, it still has a slight social taboo even though 65% of women in Jordan are taking some form of contraceptive. As a result, the fertility rate of Jordanian Women has dropped from 9.6% in 1950 to 3.75 today. To put that in perspective, women in France and the United States have a fertility rate of 1.7%. The dropping of the fertility rate in Jordan says that women are having less children, and our speaker asserted that this is because of increased education.

We also talked about abortion and the law in Jordan. By writing about this topic, I do not wish to have a debate on my blog or my facebook wall. I simply want to share information that I have learned. I am sharing facts, not my personal opinion. Those people who know me really well know I rarely share my own political opinion because I would rather hear what someone else has to say and not have them worried about my feelings. Personally, I find the abortion laws and attitudes in Jordan to show alot about the court system as well as morales in Jordan and this makes them worth discussing. According to the way Sharia law is intepreted in Jordan, abortions are allowed if the fetus is less than four months old and the fetus has a medical condition that would severely impact its life, or would be very costly to the parent. One of the professors in the room said that he did some research with some colleagues as to wether or not Sickled Cell Amenia is a condition that would allow for abortion. The groups of reseachers determined that Sickled Cell Amenia is a condition in which it is appropriate to abort the fetus. They reported this to someone in charge of the Islamic Law part of the court and it is not legally acceptable to abort a fetus with Sickled Cell. Abortions in Jordan cost 500JD (705USD) while in America they only cost $400-500. I believe that the high cost of abortions are a deterant for many people to have them. Not many people in Jordan have 500JD sitting around for a rainy day.
By Abortions are only legally in one of the three courts in Jordan. In the Civic Court and Tribal Law are totally against the idea of abortion and it is illegal. Religiously abortions are okay in Jordan, but culturally they are unacceptable. In Jordan, the person bringing about the charge picks what court system they would want to use. Its very confusing. Essentially, Jordan wants to incorporate Relgigius, tribal and Western Laws in order to appeal to all groups in Jordan. This is challenging and confusing, especially when the laws in the courts do not agree. Civic and Tribal courts are against abortion because they do not want to encourage premartial sex. In the Sharia and the Tribal court, premartial sex is illegal and can be punished, but in Civic court it is okay, but not encouraged, as long as it is between two people of opposite genders 18 years and older. If a person has sex with someone under the age of 18, they are a sex offender and will spend the rest of their life in prision. This is a stronger sentence than we have in the US. A threesome in Jordan is considered prostitution, no way around that. How awkward is this fact! I mean it came up in a lecture!

So enough about sex and things of that nature. Onto healthcare. Once again, I know government healthcare is a hot topic in the US right now, but I do not want to open a debate. I wish to share information. Jordan has two health care options: Public and Private. Tax dollars go to the Public Healthcare system. In this system, women and children must be insured and prescriptions only cost like 25cents sometimes. The Private health insurance option is more expsensive, but the speaker told us it was alot quicker. He personally takes his children to the private health centers because he works all day and does not have time to wait in line for hours at the public health offices.

Education is next. In Jordan, more people have advanced degrees than there are enough jobs for than to fill. Jordan makes deals with the Gulf Countries to allow its citizens to have jobs overseas. When I asked about the attitude of the young people in Jordan that cannot find jobs after school, Dr. Madi told me that the youth in Jordan are going to school more for the honor of going to school and do not necessarily care about increased financial gain. I call bullshit. As a young person going to school, I know I want a job with my degree after college. If I was driving a taxi or working at McDonalds, I would feel sad and want to better my prospects. People are People and it does not matter where you live or your background, we all tend to want and need the same things. I do not feel that the Jordanian Taxi drivers with masters degrees are happy driving my butt to SIT everyday. They would most likely be doing something else if they could. The lack of jobs in this country is the underlining factor in protests. The young people have the energy to get up and demonstrate. Surely jobs is one of their concerns.

Now onto some fun things.

After school, I went with four other students to the grocery store to pick up some food for a party. We were going to go to Jesse's host family's host for dinner in the evening and needed to pick up food to cook. Jesse's host brother picked up pork for us. Pork is very exspensive in Jordan and for some reason Jesse's host brother, who is Christian, really wanted to have a pork roast. We figured what the heck and all chipped in. While at the Grocery Store, I had the idea of picking up some pineapple to grill. People at first seemed skeptical, but we go the pineapple.

Since there were 5 of us, we all squeezed into a cab. We had the three ladies in the back with one of the guys, Will, sitting on Emma's lap. Grace took a picture which I will share when she puts it on facebook. We all could not stop laughing. Even the driver was laughing at us.

Eventually we ran to Jesse's house where we met his host brother. His host brother is 21 and just likes to chill with SIT students. He usually hosts get together. Turns out, Jesse's host brother bought 5 kilograms of pork, a huge amount. His host brother was nice, but when I asked Jesse what I could do cooking wise, the host brother interjected that I should wash the dished because "that was women's work". Then he started laughing. Grace and I looked stunned for a minute, but then just cleaned the kebob skewers. The host brother is the only guy ever who could have gotten away with that comment. I could have skewered him (joking). The host brother kepted an eye on how Grace and I were cleaning the skewers. They were hard to clean as they already had some residue meet stuck on them from a while ago. I have never washed dishes with a superviser before.

While we were cooking, the host brother set up a hookah. I finished the dishes quickly and than asked if he could show me how to set up a hookah. He gave me a very nice demonstration that I really appriciated. The hookah flavor was apple, one of my favorites.

I think about 13 students in totally came to the party. We had fun talking, eating tons of pork and laughing. Below are some pictures of the party. I titled my post today, Haram with a side of Haram because I was talking about taboo subjects (abortion and birth control), but I was also participating in eating pork and drinking a beer. While not all muslims follow this rule, pork and liquer are kind of off limits. Haram is arabic for "Forbidden". Yesterday was a day full of harams.

Also I finally got to do my hair. It was an awesome day :)