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Jordan

Also Known As Jordanian
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Jordan is majority Sunni Muslim with a significant Christian minority whose presence in the region predates Islam, and its territory holds sites of major significance across multiple traditions, including Mount Nebo, from which the Hebrew Bible describes Moses viewing the Promised Land, and the site on the Jordan River traditionally associated with the baptism of Jesus. Petra, the rock cut Nabataean city, was the capital of a kingdom that blended Arabian, Hellenistic and Roman religious influence before its later Christian and Islamic periods. The Jordanian monarchy holds a recognized custodial role over Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem under longstanding agreements, giving the country an outsized diplomatic role in regional religious affairs relative to its size. Religious minorities generally practice openly within a legal framework that privileges Islam as the state religion.

Facts
Law and State
Establishment Status
Established 3
Article 2 of Jordan's constitution names Islam the religion of the State; the Hashemite king additionally holds constitutionally and diplomatically recognised custodianship of Jerusalem's Islamic and Christian holy sites, administered through the Jordanian funded Waqf.
State Funding Mechanism
Jordan pays the salaries of its Sunni Muslim religious establishment directly from the state budget. The Ministry of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs appoints imams, pays mosque staff salaries, manages the more than 7,600 mosques registered with it and over 2,700 authorized preachers, and subsidizes mosque-run holiday and religious observances; the Ministry mandates that Friday sermons follow officially prescribed themes, with suspension, a formal warning or dismissal the consequence for a Ministry-employed imam who departs from them. Jordan's recognized Christian communities, by contrast, fund their own clergy independently of the state, though they hold other legal privileges including their own religious courts for personal status matters. 4
Apostasy or Blasphemy Law
Penal Code (Law No. 16 of 1960) Article 273 punishes publicly insulting a prophet with one to three years imprisonment. Article 278 punishes publishing or broadcasting material offensive to other people's religious feelings or beliefs with up to three months imprisonment or a fine of up to twenty dinars. A 2006 amendment to the Criminal Procedures Act lets Jordan prosecute such offenses committed abroad by electronic means where the effect reaches the Jordanian public. 5
Registration or Recognition Regime
To gain recognition as an official denomination a Christian group submits its bylaws, a membership list, its budget and its religious doctrine to the Ministry of Interior and the Prime Ministry, and must be recommended by the Ministry of Interior and approved by the Cabinet; one criterion the government applies is recognition by the Middle East Council of Churches. Eleven denominations hold this recognized status, among them the Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic (Melkite), Armenian Orthodox, Maronite Catholic, Assyrian, Anglican and Lutheran churches. Other Christian groups, including Baptist and Free Evangelical congregations, instead register with the Ministry of Justice as ordinary "societies," a lesser status than a recognized church. 4
Ban or Official Watchlist
Jordan's Court of Cassation, the country's highest court, dissolved the Muslim Brotherhood on July 15, 2020, ruling that the organization had failed to regularize its legal status; the government separately continues to deny official recognition to the Baha'i Faith and the Jehovah's Witnesses, leaving both without the legal standing a recognized religious community holds. 4
Concordat Basis
Jordan has no concordat with the Holy See. Article 2 of the 1952 Constitution, as revised through 2011, names Islam the religion of the state while safeguarding free exercise of all forms of worship consistent with public order, and Article 28 requires the King to be Muslim, the country's own constitutional relationship to religion. 6
Demographics
Religious Composition
About 95-97% Sunni Muslim; Christian minority of roughly 2-3%, chiefly Greek Orthodox, among the oldest continuously present Christian populations in the region (Pew Research Center, Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020). 1
Geography
Latitude
30.6 degrees north 2
Approximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a country's extent has no single center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a survey measurement.
Longitude
36.2 degrees east 2
Approximate reference point, rounded to one decimal place; a country's extent has no single center, so this coordinate is conventional, not a survey measurement.
Government
Capital
Amman 2
Government Type
parliamentary constitutional monarchy 2
Sovereignty Status
Sovereign UN member state 2
Established Year
1946 2
25 May 1946 (from League of Nations mandate under British administration)
Status
Legal Status
The Hashemite king is constitutionally and diplomatically recognized, including under the 1994 peace treaty with Israel and a 2013 agreement with the Palestinian Authority, as custodian of Jerusalem's Islamic and Christian holy sites, administered through the Jordanian-funded Waqf. 3
Location
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Religion and History in Jordan

Jordan is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, around 95 to 97 percent per estimates including Pew Research's Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020, with a Christian minority of roughly 2 to 3 percent, chiefly Greek Orthodox alongside smaller Catholic and Protestant communities, among the oldest continuously present Christian populations in the region.

Jordan's Hashemite monarchy traces its legitimacy partly to a claimed direct descent from the Prophet Muhammad through his daughter Fatima, a genealogy that underpins the king's constitutional role as guardian of Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, administered through the Jerusalem-based Waqf. The region holds significant biblical and early Christian heritage, including Mount Nebo, where tradition holds Moses viewed the Promised Land before his death, and the Baptism Site at Bethany beyond the Jordan on the river's east bank, identified by archaeological and textual evidence as the likely location of Jesus's baptism by John the Baptist and recognized by UNESCO.

Petra, the Nabataean rock-cut city, served religious functions in Nabataean polytheistic worship before its gradual Christianization in the Byzantine era. Crusader-era fortresses such as Kerak Castle, built by Frankish lords in the twelfth century to guard pilgrim routes to Jerusalem before falling to Saladin's forces in 1188, mark a further layer of the territory's contested religious and military history between the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem and the surrounding Muslim states.

The Hashemite Custodianship of Jerusalem's Holy Sites

Jordan's king holds a unique religious role formalized in Article 9 of the 1994 Jordan-Israel peace treaty and further specified in a 2013 agreement with the Palestinian Authority, recognizing the Hashemite monarch as custodian of the Islamic and Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, a role administered practically through the Jordanian-funded Waqf that oversees the Temple Mount and al-Aqsa Mosque compound and, more informally, extends patronage over the city's Christian churches and their clergy appointments. This custodianship gives Jordan a direct stake in the status quo governing the Temple Mount, and Jordanian officials have repeatedly protested Israeli policy changes there as violations of the arrangement, including periodic recalls of Jordan's ambassador to Israel over access disputes.

Jordan absorbed a very large Palestinian refugee population after 1948 and again after 1967, a demographic shift that has shaped the kingdom's religious and political life considerably given the large Christian and Muslim Palestinian communities involved, and the 1970 Black September conflict between the Jordanian army and Palestinian armed factions remains a defining, still-sensitive episode in the kingdom's modern history.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

This source names Jordan directly: "among philosophers on YouTube only by Jordan Peterson, sits uneasily beside a private life (repeated failed marriages, heavy drinking, infidelity documented by his own biographer) that his teaching..."

The eastern shore is Jordanian, and the candidate sites for the cities of the plain lie at the southern end of the basin.

Source The Dead Sea: Myth, History, and PoliticsBarbara Kreiger

This source names Jordan directly: "identification of Tall el-Hammam in Jordan as the biblical Sodom."

This source names Jordan directly: "Farm community founded by Clarence Jordan."

Source Habitat for Humanity (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Jordan directly: "Americus, Georgia founded by Clarence Jordan."

Source Habitat for Humanity (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
Islam, Religions

About 95 to 97% Sunni Muslim.

Source Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020Pew Research Center

This source names Jordan directly: "of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, shown here as revised through 2011, in full English translation by the Constitute Project."

Source Jordan 1952 (rev. 2011) Constitution (Constitute Project)Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

This source names Jordan directly: "Jordan of Saxony's Libellus de principiis Ordinis Praedicatorum (On the Beginnings of the Order of Preachers), written by Dominic de Guzman's own successor as head of the order within a few years of..."

The traditional baptism site at al-Maghtas stands on the eastern bank, in Jordan.

This source names Jordan directly: "Juno Jordan, a reference biography published on Numerologist.com, a practitioner website rather than an academic or peer reviewed source, covers the numerologist credited with developing a widely..."

Source Juno Jordan (reference biography)Numerologist.com editorial staff

This source names Jordan directly: "The Spirit Science Deck, created by Jordan River and published jointly by Schiffer Publishing under its REDFeather imprint."

This source names Jordan directly: "Rachel Havrelock's River Jordan, The Mythology of a Dividing Line, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2011, is a scholarly study tracing how the Jordan River functions across the Hebrew..."

This source names Jordan directly: "and crossing Syria, Lebanon and Jordan before passing through Jerusalem and ending at Abraham's traditional tomb at Hebron."

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)Encyclopaedia Britannica editors

This source names Jordan directly: "excavated at Tell Deir Alla in the Jordan Valley in 1967, is a primary ancient text; the atlas records no publisher and no exact publication year because it is an excavated artifact rather than a..."

This source names Jordan directly: "Wikipedia's article on the Jordan Museum is an open, continuously revised tertiary reference with no dedicated editorial board of subject specialists checking it."

Source The Jordan Museum (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Jordan directly: "centers it on Christ's baptism in the Jordan, understood as the moment the Trinity was made visibly manifest."

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

This source names Jordan directly: "commemorating Jesus's baptism in the Jordan."

Source The Festival of TimketEthiopian Orthodox Tewahdo Church Sunday School Department (Mahibere Kidusan)

This source names Jordan directly: "of Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, signed in 1994 and read here from the Avalon Project's hosted text at Yale Law School, is the primary diplomatic instrument itself, the actual treaty..."

Source Treaty of Peace between the State of Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of JordanState of Israel and Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

This source names Jordan directly: "Santa, the Ang Pagtaltal production at Jordan, Guimaras, and the San Pedro Cutud penitents who undergo crucifixion outside the regular play to fulfil personal vows, cross checked here against..."

Source Wikipedia, "Passion Play" (Philippines section)Wikipedia contributors

Contains

Amman, Cities

Amman is the capital of Jordan and its largest city.

Source The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd editionP. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.)
Gomorrah, Cities

Why this is disputed. Gomorrah is conventionally paired with Sodom and shares its location debate. The traditional southern Dead Sea plain identification points to a site near Bab edh-Dhra, within modern Jordan; more recent excavations argue instead for a northern Jordan Valley location, also in Jordan but a different site and destruction layer, a claim most biblical archaeologists have not accepted; and a third, widely held position treats the Cities of the Plain as a narrative tradition with no securely identified historical site, which would make any single country of containment an assertion the evidence cannot settle.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Madaba, Cities
Source The Catholic EncyclopediaCharles George Herbermann et al. (eds.)
Sodom, Cities

Why this is disputed. Archaeologists disagree on which excavated site, if any, is Sodom. The traditional southern Dead Sea plain identification points to Bab edh-Dhra or nearby Numeira, both destroyed by fire in the Early Bronze Age and both within modern Jordan. More recent excavations argue instead for a site in the eastern Jordan Valley, also in Jordan but a different site and a different destruction layer, a claim most biblical archaeologists have not accepted. A third position, common among mainstream historians of religion, treats Sodom as a narrative tradition with no securely identified historical site at all.

Zoar (Bela), Cities

Scholarly consensus places biblical Zoar at Ghor es-Safi, southeastern Dead Sea, in modern Jordan.

Source The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)Anonymous (multiple authors)

Originated Here

Nabataeans, Cultures
Sources
1. Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020
Pew Research Center, Pew Research Center, 2025View the Source
2. The World Factbook (Central Intelligence Agency)
Central Intelligence Agency, Central Intelligence AgencyView the Source
3. Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)
Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2024View the Source
4. International Religious Freedom Report
United States Department of State, Office of International Religious Freedom, US Department of State, 2023View the Source
5. End Blasphemy Laws Project: Jordan Country Page
Humanists International, End Blasphemy Laws projectView the Source
6. Jordan 1952 (rev. 2011) Constitution (Constitute Project)
Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Constitute ProjectView the Source
The Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition
Oxford University Press, Oxford University Pressdemonym / adjectival formView the Source
Discovering the City of Sodom: The Fascinating, True Account of the Discovery of the Old Testament's Most Infamous City
Steven Collins and Latayne C. Scott, Howard Books, 2013Contains: Sodom
Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005Contains: GomorrahView the Source
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