Rania of Jordan is not just queen. She is a style icon, an advocate for women's rights and a fighter against extremism.
You only know her smiling. People like to say with the brightest smile in the world. Her Majesty Rania al Abdullah (50) seems like an oriental revelation to her enchanted audience in the western hemisphere.
Immediately images like from "1001 Nights" are used. The monarch is a "Lady Diana of the Orient", rave the European and American media – and beyond that: "the most beautiful queen in the world". A style icon that was chosen by the fashion bible "Vogue" "as the most beautiful and attractive living royal" due to its classically shaped chin area, lips, nose width and forehead.
This truly regal apparition will be 50 years old on August 31st. The seemingly ageless Queen of Jordan has been married to King Abdullah II (58) since 1993, who came to the throne in 1999.
Conquered your heart with culinary delights
The couple met in 1992 at a banquet in the Jordanian capital, Amman. At that time, Abdullah was still crown prince and Rania was a freshly qualified business economist with a bachelor's degree from the American University of Cairo.
The magazine "Bunte" described the meeting as follows: "'Wow!' is said to have shot through the head when he saw the dark-haired beauty with the doe eyes at dinner. But he had to fight hard for Rania. She turned down the Prince's first dinner invitation. Abdullah finally won her heart with – attention! – Belgian chocolate. "
On the first date, the prince is said to have cooked "traditional Japanese cuisine" for Rania. With success. Finally, while on a trip to the Tal-Al-Rumman Mountains, Abdullah told his girlfriend "that their relationship was slowly getting serious. Two weeks later, his father, the king, went to Rania's parents and asked for the hand of their firstborn for his son on. Happy ending programmed! "
The style icon
The beautiful queen has been the darling of international fashion magazines for over two decades, who praise the tasteful look of the Muslim woman Rania – very stylish and never screaming – above all else. "Instead of a headscarf, she wears western designer fashion," wrote the "Süddeutsche Zeitung".
Regarding the headscarf, she said: "What is in the head is more important than what is on top. I tell those who think I should wear a head covering more often that I believe that in Islam the relationship with God is very direct and is very personal, and accordingly we can make our own decisions. "
Rania from Jordan does not live and work in the comfortable comfort zones of western royal families like in the Netherlands, Sweden or Norway. She is queen of a country with a constitutional monarchy. The king from the Hashemite dynasty, who allegedly descended directly from the founder of the religion, the prophet Mohammed, is head of state and commander-in-chief of the armed forces of an Arab country that is shaped by internal and external conflicts.
Over 30 assassinations were carried out on Abdullah's father and predecessor King Hussein (1935-1999), all of which he survived. The great-grandfather of King Abdallah ibn Husain I was shot by a Palestinian in 1951 in Jerusalem.
A marriage with ulterior motives
Rania comes from a Palestinian family. Her marriage to Abdullah II was a political issue for the then King Hussein. The aim of this marriage was to appease the Palestinian refugees, who make up over 50 percent of the country's population, and to pacify the domestic political tensions in Jordan. That succeeded reasonably well. Rania stands up for the refugees, after all, the status quo has prevailed in Jordan for years, the royal couple functions as a link between the long-established Jordanians and immigrant Palestinians.
The Queen also repeatedly displayed unusual political courage. Ten years ago they pilloried the terrorist militia "Islamic State". In her eloquent opening speech at the 5th media conference in Abu Dhabi, she accused the IS fanatics of abusing Islam. Even more: With their silence, the Arab rulers left the "barbaric Islamists" in the social networks "without a fight the media field" and thus the "interpretive sovereignty".
Another time she vehemently tackled the practice of honor killings, in which women are killed by their own families and the perpetrators are punished only mildly, if at all. This is "clearly dishonorable. These shameful acts break both human and divine laws, because it is forbidden to kill a person or to take the law into your own hands," she said to "Bunte".
Western praise for the Queen from the Orient
Rania receives applause for her courage only from the West. In their homeland and in the Arab countries, such actions are hushed up. The largest Arab news channel "Al Jazeera" and the most important Arab newspaper "al-Shark al-Ausat" never mentioned their flaming speech against ISIS. "That has a lot to do with the fact that Rania, albeit queen, is 'just' a woman whose word hardly applies to the patriarchally structured Arab reality of life," speculates the newspaper "Die Welt".
Nevertheless, the Queen does not let up in her fight for peace and equality for women, even though 36 high-ranking Bedouin tribal leaders have publicly opposed her and complained that Rania indulges in "extravagance at the state's expense" in her designer costumes.
In raising her four children – Crown Prince Hussein (26), the princesses Iman (23) and Salma (19) as well as Prince Haschem (15) – she set standards: at 19, Salma already graduated from the British Military Academy Sandhurst and is the first female helicopter pilot in the Jordanian army.
Rania is also a real queen in social networks: 6.1 million subscribers on Instagram, 10.4 million followers on Twitter, a good 16.7 million on Facebook. There – to the indignation of the ancestors – she described her job on the throne as "mother and wife with a really cool day job". That will have permanently disturbed the dominant male world in their homeland.