2 July 2020

As the discourse of “Countering Violent Extremism” has become more prominent both within the Middle East and in talk about the Middle East, so too has the concept of moderation emerged as an apparent interpretive key to understanding the region and its most pressing political and theological debates. Yet if the definition of ‘extremism’ remains controversial, the concept of moderation is all too often taken to be self-evident—even as those with disparate political and religious convictions seek to lay claim to it. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Jordan, I trace the history and contemporary social lives of Arabic-language notions of moderation like ‘itidal and wasitiyya. I seek to map out how these terms have helped foster new forms of dispute and social control even as they have been taken up by secular and religious commentators drawing on a vibrant pre-existing textual tradition.