Over the past five years Amman, the capital city of Jordan, has seen a rate of development unrivaled in the Middle East except in the Gulf. It's not just the office blocks and fancy new housing developments that mark this change, but the arrival of a certain bling culture, which can been seen in the posters of semi-clad models inside shopping malls, and the traffic jams of new SUVs and sports cars trying to park outside.
The secret to this success is largely due to the high price of oil, which has seen Dubai billionaires, and the thousands of Jordanian expats working in the Gulf, pump money into the economy, primarily into real estate (although the Jordanian government has been successful at marketing itself as a friendly service hub in an otherwise rough neighborhood). The value of real estate in Jordan has more than doubled over the past four years to $9 billion.
But despite this very visible change, there remains a large underclass in Jordan for whom this wealth remains a world away - even if, as in the case of Subhi, the shepherd featured in this video, modernity sits just at his doorstep. Official unemployment figures in Jordan say 14.8% of the country is unemployed, although the real figure is likely to be double that, whilst almost as many may fall under the grey area of "under-employment."
Not that Subhi would consider himself under-employed. He is a shepherd, whose family has farmed his wadi (or valley) for three generations. Now his wadi is one of the last green spots in Amman - and threatened by government plans to buy and rehouse shepherds like Subhi to make way for the real estate boom.
It's a step that Subhi vehemently opposes, even though he could, so he claims, make hundreds of dollars by selling. Instead, Subhi sees his stewardship of the land as a sacred trust, handed down from father to son over the generations. To subsist off your own efforts is God's work, Subhi told me.
His views are not unique - in the Middle East they constitute the tribal bedrock of most societies, with cities like Amman, the occasional outcropping. They are important to remember when considering the emotive issue of land in the broader Arab-Israeli conflict - as well as the potential dangers of dispossessing those like Subhi.
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Comments (6)
New Dawn - Yes, yes, yes. But we can't just throw the baby out with the bath water.
June 30, 2008 8:17 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Posted on June 30, 2008 20:17
Before commenting on the column, any ideas on why people such as GeorgiaSon don't write their own blog to portray their personal agenda rather than gatecrash the work of Mr. Fairweather with personal slating? perhaps nobody would read if they did?
Onto the post...
I congratulate Subhi on feeling passion for their heritage and their skilled trades. Increasingly farmers are becoming landscape gardeners and vital skills are not being passed down generations. Once these important irrigation and shepherding skills are lost it takes decades to rebuild the infrastructure.
If Subhi is allowed to remain where he is and keep his land, he could find himself in an island surrounded by modernisation, with pollution and irrigation so severely affecting his ability to maintain his herds that he could end up losing the ability to farm the land and then become one of the under-unemployed with no way of retaining his 'comfortable' life. Perhaps a compromise can be resolved with government relocating Subhi to arable land where he can continue his trade.
It is important that these traditions and heritage continue, but perhaps this needs to co-habit with the new direction of urban redevelopment.
June 27, 2008 12:28 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Posted on June 27, 2008 12:28
While people like Mr. Fairweather go on these pages to trumpet the touch-feely, moderate Islam, people in Fairfax County, Virginia, are having to cope with the darker truth of modern Islam. At issue are textbooks used by an Islamic school that contain language intolerant of Jews and other groups as well as passages that could be construed as advocating violence. An official review of the textbooks was done by the congressionally appointed U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. That Commission recommended in October that the State Department close the school until it proves that it is not teaching a type of religious intolerance potentially dangerous to the United States.
Academy officials claim that they have removed the offending material from the textbooks. The Fairfax County government is unconvinced and has asked the U.S. State Department for a ruling.
I have made the point over and over on separate blogs on On Faith that deal with Islam: Americans must always look past the propaganda turned out by the likes of Eboo Patel and Jack Fairweather about moderate Islam and look to the authoritative voices of that religion to determine its true nature and its compatibility with liberal democracy. I have also specifically said, most recently in a comment in Eboo Patel's blog, that one way to discover that truth is to examine the textbooks of Islamic schools in America. See what Muslim students are actually being taught. I have said that I do not believe that Americans would be reassured by what they find.
I rest my case on the example of the Fairfax County case.
Let me repeat my other main refrain on these pages. A prime indication that Muslims just do not understand what America is all about is the refusal of Muslims like Mr Patel and Mr. Fairweather to ever deign to respond to any of the comments offered on these pages to their original post. They proffer their commentary and then beat a cowardly retreat into their Wizard of Oz mold. I can think of no attitude more antithetical to the American approach of free and open debate. Mr. Patel and Mr. Fairweather obviously view themselves as the equivalent of the learned Islamic scholar teaching in any Islamic educational institution. Once they speak, that's all anybody needs to know. No counter argument will be tolerated.
Americans should tremble that this attitude is being inculcated into the brains of Muslim students in Islamic schools right here in America.
June 24, 2008 7:48 AM | Report Offensive Comment
Posted on June 24, 2008 07:48
Good topic, keep the nice stories coming..
June 16, 2008 4:23 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Posted on June 16, 2008 16:23
Hard not be be sympathetic to the plight of small scale farmers like Subhi in the face of oppression, until that is he starts tyranically ordering his wife around. She seems to be the one who milks the sheep as well making the coffee to lubricate her husband's empassioned arguments
June 16, 2008 1:20 PM | Report Offensive Comment
Posted on June 16, 2008 13:20
Interesting story, I find it hard to see what the future is for people/communities like this. I hope his values, strong sense of place and tradition do not get lost as the next of kin take his place. Does the government have any power to force new real estate development on his land?
June 16, 2008 9:17 AM | Report Offensive Comment
Posted on June 16, 2008 09:17