The making of religion in secular educational spaces — a view from Jordan

In this contribution, I plead for a thorough engagement with the theme of education when discussing the secular and the religious from an anthropological perspective, following the work of scholars such as Dale Eickelman and Gregory Starrett. Universities in Jordan are an integral part of society and formally secular, yet religion is present at different levels; this of course reflects the very foundation of the state in Jordan, in which much of the legitimacy of the ruling dynasty rests on their religious credentials, as well as the uncontested primacy of religion within Jordanian society. Jordan is thus an especially apt location to investigate the mutual making of religion and the secular through higher education. In this article, I analyze this co-production in three aspects of universities in contemporary Jordan. Universities are organizations, with a clear structure, functioning, and internal differentiations; I thus first present ways in which religious sensibilities are inserted in their governance, for example during Ramadan or even during praying times. At an institutional perspective, religious sensibilities are as relevant as political considerations in guiding textbooks, teaching, and research, to name but a few aspects, but never without contestations and different understandings of how to translate these sensibilities into norms. Finally, universities are also social spaces, in which youth form their identities also through patterns of sociality that are largely regulated by at times contrasting understanding of a proper religiosity. Religion and secularism are thus to be seen as entangled concepts, at least co-produced through the educational system, whose consistence and boundaries are constantly made and remade, and yet routinely presented as being stable or even immutable.