‘Restaurants allowed to serve food during day in Ramadan’

AMMAN — Restaurants are allowed to serve food during the day in Ramadan, provided that they use curtains to respect the “sanctity” of the fasting month, according to regulations.

With the Interior Ministry tightening its grip on restaurants and cafés during Ramadan, food outlets are given some “leeway” to serve tourists, Christians and those who cannot fast, the Jordan Restaurants Association (JRA) said on Thursday.

“Liquor stores, bars and discos will be completely closed this month,” JRA Director General Eliana Janineh told The Jordan Times over the phone.

She noted that fast-food chains are allowed to deliver orders.

Muslims abstain from food and drink during Ramadan from dawn until after sunset.

Murad Zaghal, head of McDonald’s operations department, said instructions for this year’s Ramadan are similar to previous years, but “somewhat more strict”.

“We are committed to respecting the sanctity of Ramadan and trying to satisfy the needs of all parties, such as tourists and our Christian brothers,” he told The Jordan Times, adding that customers are also not allowed to eat in their cars in the restaurants’ parking lots.

The Interior Ministry has called on citizens and residents of the Kingdom “not to violate the sanctity of Ramadan” and “not to offend the feelings of people who are fasting”.

Such measures have prompted a group of citizens to initiate a Facebook page to express their frustration over what they described as “breach of freedoms and rights”.

“It is your right to fast and my right not to,” one of the administrators of the page wrote on Thursday, noting that these measures imply that the country can “order people on high moral ground”.

Opposing his opinion, another Facebook user noted that the instructions only ban people from eating in public during the day, which “preserves the holiness of the month and teaches people solidarity”.