Jordan's Fuzzy Definition Of Free Speech

Lina Ejeilat helped found the Jordanian online magazine 7iber (pronounced 'Hebber'). While the government encourages free expression in principle, many strict regulations remain, as noted by the satirical chart next to her. Art Silverman/NPR hide caption

Lina Ejeilat helped found the Jordanian online magazine 7iber (pronounced 'Hebber'). While the government encourages free expression in principle, many strict regulations remain, as noted by the satirical chart next to her.

Earlier this month, Jordan's Information Minister Mohammad Al-Momani told a conference that freedom of expression can contribute to stopping radicalization.

On the very same day, a military court in the capital Amman sentenced a man to 18 months in prison for a Facebook post that was seen as insulting a friendly country, the United Arab Emirates.

Momani spent years studying at Rice University in Houston, so he knows what Americans think of as free expression. But he sees it a little differently.

"We think to have an open space for opinion and counter-opinion, this will strengthen the value of the society," he says in an interview. "This will make the society stronger in resisting and in being immune from these terrorist and extremist ideologies. That's why we are actually keen on protecting that space and making sure there is freedom of expression, there's freedom of opinion allowed, of course, under the umbrella of the law."

The Jordanian man jailed for his Facebook post wrote, among other things, that the United Arab Emirates had a "pro-Zionist" foreign policy. The information minister defended the court's decision to jail him.

"Our laws clearly say you cannot insult a country that we have a good relationship with," he says. "His statement could have been said in a different way without insulting another country. So what he said is bad-mouthing another country that could have affected the well-being of almost a quarter of a million Jordanians working there" in the United Arab Emirates.

National Interest Trumps Free Speech

In Jordan, free expression is conditional on national interest. And the country's national interests can clash with reporters' interests on several counts.

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Jordan's Fuzzy Definition Of Free Speech