The Role of Jordanian Women in the Spiritual Formation of Their Children
By Jeanette Pinkston*

AMMAN, JORDAN—In 2008, I traveled to Amman, Jordan with a group of twenty U.S. journalists representing the Associated Church Press, Evangelical Press Association and the Catholic Press Association.

Having just covered an interfaith panel on faith formation during the joint Preaching from the Center and Christian Educators Fellowship conferences in Albuquerque last fall, I was led to explore the role of Jordanian women in the faith formation of their children while on the Jordan press tour.

The role of Jordanian women in the faith formation of their children is remarkably similar to that of women in other faith traditions. Across the board, women are typically more influential in shaping the religious practice of children; Jordanian women are no different.

Lorain Rezeq works in the business center of a local hotel in Amman, Jordan. “Women are very influential in shaping the religious life of their children,” says Rezeq. “Because they are so close to their moms, moms influence their children from ages one to ten. The children follow their mothers everywhere. They are so close to them. When you hear a mother saying her prayer, you say ‘I am going to repeat it,’” says Rezeq.

Muslim woman with children

Former Ambassador to the United Nations, Hasan Abu Nimah agrees. According to Mr. Abu Nimah, director of the Royal Institute for Inter-faith Studies, a child will probably be more influenced by his mother than by his father because of the physical proximity to the mother, normally.

“But I can not really talk about any rules that define the role of women or the role of parents [in] shaping the religion of their children,” he said. “A child from Christian parents will normally be Christian, from Moslem parents will be Moslem, from mixed parents that’s difficult to say. You don’t have a rule that applies to every situation,” said Mr. Abu Nimah.

While Muslims are asked to practice their beliefs by performing certain acts of worship, actually doing so is a matter of choice, as in other religions. Some people are very strict in adhering to the religious practices of their faith, while others are not.

“I think it is safe to say that regardless of one’s faith or background, perhaps the most influential person or one of the two most influential, in the minimum, is the mother,” says Ihab Wl-Kady, Ph.D., of the Islamic Center and University of New Mexico. “On her shoulders, reality says [rests] the core of faith formation for the offspring — at least in the very first few years or stages of that persons life.”

El-Kady told a gathering of over 600 Methodist educators, lay, and clergy, that women shape the faith of their young, and because they represent half of the universe, they actually have a bigger hand in faith formation than male members of that faith.

“How a mother embraces her duties and embraces her faith will really reflect on how I will embrace my faith and go through it,” he said.

Mr. Abu Nimah says, “if a child is born to a Moslem mother and a Moslem father, the child will be Moslem. If the child is born to a Christian mother and Moslem father, (we have a lot of cross marriages here), that depends on the family itself. Sometimes they agree what the children will be when they have children. Sometimes they leave it to chance.”

Throughout our travels around Jordan, we found that in Muslim and Christian communities, women have a strong influence in the family, workplace, religion and society in general. As El-Kady suggests, one can obviously spend hours and hours talking about the rights and roles and duties of women in Islam. He says it is especially imperative for those who are foreign to Islam, or who are not Muslim to separate what is cultural from what is Islamic when viewing people practicing faith from a culture perspective like in the Gulf region or in North Africa.

“One needs to ask himself — or ask those who know Islam — what of these practices is actually cultural and what of these practices is actually Islamic?” said El-Kady.

While young children are trained in the rituals of Islam, Islam is not just the ritual; it is the faithful belief itself.

“Although we teach our children and start training them how to pray at the age of seven and start teaching how to actually fast at the age of ten, we don’t go through the entire day. We go through segments of the day and a little longer as the child grows older. Then the length of the fasting actually extends until hopefully when they reach puberty they can actually fast the entire month of Ramadan.

“But the training for the ritual itself is only the surface. This is what you see the child or the member of the faith actually doing. What lies in his heart is completely different. Nobody can tell what lies in your heart but yourself.

“It is fundamentally important to understand that the prime role for faith formation in our system of belief lays on the family itself, then on peers, then on the leadership,” said El-Kady.

*Pinkston is the director of media relations for the United Methodist General Board of Discipleship (GBOD). She resides in Nashville, Tenn.