Work · Philosophy in the Islamic World
Beyond the Veil
Muslim sexual politics: the seclusion of women is a strategy against the power attributed to female sexuality, not a religious necessity.
Introduction
Fatima Mernissi, a Moroccan sociologist, based the book on her doctoral research at Brandeis University; it appeared in 1975 and in a revised edition in 1987. The first part reads classical Muslim texts, among them al-Ghazali, as presenting women not as passive but as sexually active and powerful – so that seclusion, veiling and the separation of the sexes serve to contain a power regarded as a threat to the male community of believers. The second part uses interviews and Moroccan family law to show how modernisation, schooling and wage work were unsettling these arrangements. The book is widely read in courses on gender in Muslim societies.
More works by Fatima Mernissi
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