Deaf Jordanian

Jordan's Deaf are the people who use Jordanian Sign Language (Lughat al-Ishara al-Urduniyya, LIU) and take part in Deaf life: schools for the deaf, clubs and associations. LIU is the Jordanian variety of Levantine Arabic Sign Language and is mutually intelligible with the Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese varieties. The community draws members from every population group in the country, East Bank, Palestinian-origin, Bedouin, Circassian and refugee, and inherited deafness linked to cousin marriage (28-63% of marriages are between relatives) makes it larger than in most countries. LIU took shape in schools for the deaf from the 1960s, above all the Holy Land Institute for the Deaf in Salt, founded in 1964, and in the thirteen government Al-Amal schools. It has several regional dialects and no standard form; a 500-sign dictionary appeared in 2006 and an online video dictionary was being built in 2024-2025. Deaf Jordanians call themselves al-summ (the deaf) and use the sign name of their school or club as a marker of belonging. People who lose their hearing later in life and keep using spoken Arabic belong to their own peoples.

Deaf social life centres on school alumni networks, Deaf clubs and associations in Amman, Zarqa and Irbid, sports and, increasingly, smartphones, WhatsApp video calls and social media. Deaf people meet hearing Jordanian family life at weddings and holidays, where communication often falls to a signing sibling. Literacy in written Arabic is low because most schooling was oral, so visual media and signed video dominate. Summer camps run by Christian charities and vocational programmes in carpentry, sewing and computing are important meeting points.

Most Deaf Jordanians share the Sunni Muslim identity of their families, and a minority the Christian faith of Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant families. The oral core of Muslim practice is largely closed to them: Friday sermons, Quran recitation and religious lessons are rarely interpreted. In 2011 Jordan's Society for the Preservation of the Holy Quran released a 60-hour tafsir of the whole Quran in sign language and promised a free copy to every deaf Jordanian, and televised sermons are sometimes interpreted. Religious knowledge among deaf adults is often fragmentary, learned from family example rather than teaching.

Jordanian Sign Language has the JESUS film (Jesus Film Project), New Testament passages published between 2019 and 2024 and available in the Deaf Bible app, and Bible stories produced by The Carpenter's Son Foundation, which also runs a deaf summer camp and is building an online LIU dictionary (2024-2025). The Anglican Holy Land Institute for the Deaf in Salt has educated Deaf Jordanians for six decades, but no Deaf church among Muslim-background Deaf Jordanians is known. Written Arabic Bibles are of limited use because of low literacy. Resources made in LIU also reach many Palestinian, Syrian and Lebanese signers.