An overview of anarchism in Jordan today
by hamza - jordanian anarchists
hamza_hhh(at)hotmail.com
phone: 00962788467931

Anarchists in Jordan... theory and activites
Finally after more than 50 years of communist activism in Jordan the anarchists started to gather… Most Jordanian anarchists are artists who work in music, film-making, and graphic design, one of our comrades is finishing his master's in gender studies… some comrades are Jordanian and others are Palestinian refugees living in Jordan. Most of us come from a Marxist background so theory has great importance for us…Two comrades finally found an Arabic book that talks about anarchism… actually we found three more books but with different Arabic words for “anarchism”

Fawdawiya, which literally means kenotic
La soltawiya, which literally means anti-authoritarianism Taharoriya, which literally means libertarianism
Anarkeya, which literally means anarchism.
We also found Egyptian and Lebanese anarchist websites which were extremely helpful.

Until now we are about 20 comrades. I believe that there more anarchists in the country but it is hard to find them!

Lately, we became part of a bigger movement called the social left, which consists of Marxists, feminists and others. Despite the fact that the movement has more than 1,000 members, we anarchists have, relatively, a very strong influence and effect in/on the group. We meet in an Anti-globalization office in Jordan.

When we started reading, we looked for any form of anarchy in our own history and local culture. After reading a book called “Sufi tropics” written by an Iraqi writer (Hadi al Alawi), we found that Sufism is ALL ABOUT anarchism. Actually we found a website on the internet that talks about Sufi-anarchism… now most of us label themselves as Sufi anarchists. We even found Sufi anarchist movements and groups from the 8-16th centuries. So, after reading what we were able to find from Bakunin’s, Proudhon’s and Kropotkin’s books, and after studying the history of anarchy in Spain, Ukraine, Paris, Mexico… and after studying Sufism, we started to have our own understanding of anarchism.

others r messed up comrade of us even worked on his own understanding of sufi-anarchism in a way compatible with his own understanding of post-modernism and the fall of ideology or what he called nihilist Sufi anarchism (plz don’t ask me to explain!!!)

We heard about other groups in Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon and Palestine, but never met any of them.

Last week, a very important columnist wrote about us – anarchists – in the most popular newspaper in the country, after he saw our flag for the first time in a protest.

All political movements and parties in Jordan have a problem with numbers. Recruiting more people can be very difficult because most people are too afraid to participate.

In Jordan we still suffer expulsion from universities because of any political activities. Laws that are extremely hard to understand and interpret and which are used against political activists, like:

disturbing civil harmony!
bashing higher status!
long tongue!!!
copying without permission!
Unauthorized gatherings!
Human Rights Watch talks about torture, kidnappings…there is also 3 years in prison because of founding unauthorized groups.
So, anarchism in Jordan still has a long way to go but it is expected to grow in the coming years…
From ur brothers/sisters … comrades

Anarchists of Jordan