Fatima Mernissi
The seclusion of women comes not from the Qur’an but from the male elite that shaped tradition – Islam itself allows women a full public life.
Placement
Moroccan sociologist: the seclusion of women is not Qur’anic but the work of a male elite that shaped the hadith tradition; Islam read historically allows women full participation in public life.
Key ideas
- Critique of the male elite’s reading of tradition
- Historical reading of the hadith
- Veil and public space
Criticism
Criticizes 2
al-Ghazali
criticised
Mernissi read al-Ghazali’s book on marriage in the Ihya as treating women’s sexuality as an active danger (fitna) that justified seclusion and segregation (Beyond the Veil, 1975). F. Mernissi, Beyond the Veil: Male–Female Dynamics in a Modern Muslim Society, 1975
Evidence: AI draft
al-Ghazali › 1058–1111
Sigmund Freud
criticised
Mernissi set Freud’s theory of a passive female sexuality against al-Ghazali’s theory of an active one, treating both as culturally bound (Beyond the Veil, 1975). F. Mernissi, Beyond the Veil: Male–Female Dynamics in a Modern Muslim Society, 1975
Evidence: AI draft
Sigmund Freud › 1856–1939
Works
- 1975Beyond the Veil
Muslim sexual politics: the seclusion of women is a strategy against the power attributed to female sexuality, not a religious necessity.
A historical reading of the hadith on women: how a male elite shaped the tradition after the Prophet’s death.
Position
Mernissi’s first book, “Beyond the Veil”, argued that Islamic sexual ethics does not regard women as passive but as actively and dangerously powerful, so that seclusion and veiling are strategies for containing a feared force. “The Veil and the Male Elite” goes back to the sources: through a historical study of the hadith concerning women, she argues that the Prophet’s own practice was egalitarian and that misogynist traditions were introduced or selected by a male elite in the generations after his death. Her method, examining the chain of transmission and the political interests behind each report, uses the tools of Islamic scholarship against its conservative use.
Life & context
Fatima Mernissi (1940–2015) was born in a harem household in Fez, Morocco, and was among the first generation of girls there to attend school. She studied political science in Rabat and at the Sorbonne and took a doctorate in sociology at Brandeis University in 1974, then taught at Mohammed V University in Rabat. She wrote in French, English and Arabic; her memoir of childhood in the harem became widely read.
Further main works
- Islam and Democracy (1992)
- Dreams of Trespass (1994)
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