Work · Philosophy in the Islamic World
The Veil and the Male Elite
A historical reading of the hadith on women: how a male elite shaped the tradition after the Prophet’s death.
Introduction
The book appeared in French in 1987 as Le Harem politique and in English in 1991. Mernissi returns to the hadith, the reports of the Prophet’s sayings and deeds, and asks who transmitted the traditions hostile to women and why. Using the classical methods of hadith criticism, she examines for instance the saying that a people who entrust their affairs to a woman will not prosper, which was handed down by Abu Bakra after the Battle of the Camel (656), in which Aisha led one side. She also reconstructs the public role of women in early Medina and the circumstances of the verse on the hijab. The book is often counted among the founding texts of Islamic feminism.
More works by Fatima Mernissi
- 1975Beyond the Veil
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