Foreign Policy as Protection: The Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood as a Political Minority During the Cold War

Abstract

In contemporary Jordan, the Muslim Brotherhood and its parliamentary affiliate, the Islamic Action Front, are widely seen as the most important political opposition in the Hashemite Kingdom. Since 1989, when parliamentary elections were held for the first time since 1967, the relationship between the Brotherhood and the regime has generally deteriorated. In fact, it has reached such depths that the original Muslim Brotherhood Society (Jamāʿat al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn), founded in 1945, has effectively become illegal since a new and more pro-regime alternative Muslim Brotherhood Society Association (Jamʿiyyat Jamāʿat al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn) was approved by the regime in 2015 (Ryan in Jordan and the Arab Uprisings: Regime Survival and Political Beyond the State. Columbia University Press‚ New York, 2018).