Fatema Mernissi (Arabic: فاطمة المرنيسي, romanized: Fāṭima Marnīsī; 27 September 1940 – 30 November 2015) was a Moroccan feminist writer and sociologist.
Fatema Mernissi was born on 27 September 1940 in Fez, Morocco. She grew up in the harem of her affluent paternal grandmother along with various female kin and servants. She received her primary education in a school established by the nationalist movement, and secondary level education in an all-girls school funded by the French protectorate. She started her studies in political science at Mohammed V University in 1959. She then obtained scholarships to pursue studies in sociology, leading her to the Sorbonne in 1966, then she transferred to Brandeis University in 1970, where she gained her doctorate in 1973.
She returned to work at the Mohammed V University in Rabat and taught at the Faculté des Lettres between 1974 and 1981 on subjects such as methodology, family sociology and psychosociology. Further, she was a research scholar at the University Institute for Scientific Research at the same university.
Mernissi's Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Muslim Society was written for her PhD thesis and later published as a book which recognizes the power of Muslim women in relation to the Islamic faith. Mernissi is known for her sociopolitical approaches towards discussing gender and sexual identities, specifically those in Morocco and other Muslim countries. She is regarded as an influential feminist figure, as she was a renowned public speaker, scholar, teacher, writer, and sociologist. Mernissi died in Rabat on 30 November 2015.
Publications and their influence
Mernissi's first monograph, Beyond the Veil, was published in 1975. A revised edition was published in Britain in 1985 and in the US in 1987. Beyond the Veil has become a classic, especially in the fields of anthropology and sociology, on women in the Arab World, the Mediterranean area or Muslim societies in general.
As an Islamic feminist, Mernissi was largely concerned with Islam and women's roles, analyzing the historical development of Islamic thought and its modern manifestations. Through a detailed investigation of the nature of the succession to Muhammad, she cast doubt on the validity of some of the hadith (sayings and traditions attributed to him), and therefore the subordination of women that she sees in Islam, but not necessarily in the Qur'an.
In 1984, she contributed the text "The merchant's daughter and the son of the sultan" to the anthology Sisterhood Is Global: The International Women's Movement Anthology, edited by Robin Morgan. Her most famous book as an Islamic feminist, The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women's Rights in Islam, is a quasi-historical study of the role of the wives of Muhammad. It was first published in French in 1987 and translated into English in 1991. The book was subsequently banned in Morocco, Iran, and the Arab states of the Persian Gulf.
As a sociologist, Mernissi mainly undertook field work in Morocco. On several occasions in the late 1970s and early 1980s, she conducted interviews in order to map prevailing attitudes to women and their work. She did sociological research for UNESCO and ILO as well as for the Moroccan government. In the same period, Mernissi contributed articles to periodicals and other publications on women in Morocco and women and Islam from a contemporary as well as from a historical perspective.
Her work has been cited as an inspiration by other Muslim feminists, such as those who founded Musawah and others. For Doing Daily Battle: Interviews with Moroccan Women (1991), she interviewed peasant women, women labourers, clairvoyants and maidservants. In 1994, Mernissi published a fictional memoir, Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood (in the US, the book was originally titled The Harem Within: Tales of a Moroccan Girlhood, and is still known by that title in the UK).
A recurring topic in her writings is the fictional character Scheherazade of Arabian Nights. Her article, The Satellite, the Prince, and Scheherazade: The Rise of Women as Communicators in Digital Islam explores cases in which women take part in online media, while Digital Scheherazades in the Arab World covers the topics of online activities shifting cultural ways. In these essays, she mentions how technology is quickly spreading – one of the main sources being the World Wide Web – and analyses the roles and contributions of women in this movement.
She wrote extensively about life within harems, gender, and public and private spheres. Size 6: The Western Women’s Harem, is an essay from her book, Scheherazade Goes West: Different Cultures, Different Harems that discusses the repression and pressures women in different societies face merely based on their physical appearance. Whether she analyzes women in Moroccan society or in the West, she claims that they must live up to stereotypical, culturally imposed standards, such as dress sizes. Mernissi compares the clothing size 6 to harems and states that these Western practices isolate and mistreat women.
Ethnocentrism: Beyond the Veil
In 1975, Fatima Mernissi's first book, Beyond the Veil, was published, and it was considered revolutionary. Mernissi broke down the ethnocentric stereotypes Western society had developed towards Islam, especially Muslim women. She distinguished Muslim women from the homogenized group of ‘third-world women’ that Western feminism had created. Mernissi also fought to overcome Western assumptions that Muslim women were helpless victims of both their religion and the men of their religion. Western stereotypes ostracized Muslim men who did not fit the white, masculine, hegemonic mold dominating the first world society, developing racist ideas towards a religion that was believed to oppress women.
However, Mernissi pointed out that Muslim women were not victims of their religious practices any more than Western women were victims of the patriarchy; both groups of women were oppressed by specific social institutions within a religion or society created to profit from the marginalization of others. Furthermore, Mernissi explained that Western women were veiled, just as Muslim women were, yet Western veils were much more discreet. She argued that youth and beauty veiled Western women, and once a woman no longer had these, she was hardly recognized by society.
Mernissi broke down the ethnocentric approach Western Feminism had been utilizing and wrote to bring more clarity to the diversity necessary within the global Feminine movement. Mernissi's legacy is revolutionary because she created a space within an initially predominantly Western movement that allowed Muslim women to participate without compromising their religious practices. Mernissi's work highlighted how Western feminism could be detrimental to the empowerment of women around the globe if it lacked an intersectional approach to women's issues.
Intersectionality: The Forgotten Queens of Islam
In the book The Forgotten Queens of Islam, Fatima Mernissi uses an intersectional approach to understand the positions of women throughout early Islamic history through social and political identities that created modes of discrimination. Her aim was to bring to light the significant contributions that women had made throughout early Islamic history and debunk the misconceptions about the absence of women as political and authoritative figures. She does this by exploring the leadership roles that women were involved in throughout Islamic history and alters the way women are portrayed in historiographies. She claims that women held powerful political positions despite religious titles that were given to men. This is exemplified through the many historical accounts that she provides about fifteen women and the active roles that they played in pre-modern Islam politics.