Fatima Mernissi

Fatima Mernissi was a Moroccan sociologist and writer, one of the best-known Muslim feminist thinkers. Born in Fez and educated in Rabat, Paris and the United States, she taught at Mohammed V University in Rabat. In The Veil and the Male Elite she re-examined the early sources of Islam, questioning the reliability of hadiths used to exclude women from public life and arguing that the Prophet's community had been more open to women than later tradition allowed. Her memoir Dreams of Trespass describes growing up in a Fez harem. She argued that equality for women could be found within Islam's own history.

Key ideas

• Restrictions on women in Muslim societies come largely from later political interpretation, not from the Prophet's own practice.
• Hadiths used against women's public role must be tested by scrutinising their transmitters and historical context.
• The division of space into male public and female private spheres is a form of power, not a natural order.
• Democracy and women's rights need not be imported from the West; resources for them exist within Islamic tradition.

Major works

• The Veil and the Male Elite (1987)
• Beyond the Veil (1975)
• Dreams of Trespass (1994)
• Islam and Democracy: Fear of the Modern World (1992)
• Scheherazade Goes West (2001)

In the Book corner

• The Veil and the Male Elite 1987; English translation 1991 · Intermediate
  A study by the Moroccan sociologist Fatima Mernissi of the sources used to restrict women's role in Islam, first published in French…

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