Fatima Mernissi (1940–2015)

Crucial ideas: Islam has codified and imposed a system of slavery on women for about 14 centuries. In this system men possess women, women are not constituted as human beings who belong to themselves, but as human beings belonging to men. The Muslim umma, then, the community of believers, properly refers to men and the male brotherhood, who own the female portion of the population.

The subjugation has a religious basis and justification. "Allah does not speak to women"--the Koran addresses show more itself to the male subject, posits the male as the subject, and the male mediates between god and the woman and informs her of her duties and rights.

Islam as a "sacred basis of society" is not only accepted by the traditionalists but generally speaking by the "modernisers" as well, because (as far as I can tell) anything else is a non-starter. There is no way to dispense with understanding the Koran as the word of God and that human society should be based on the word of God--one can only hope to negotiate about the interpretation of that word.

"...the Muslim message, in spite of its beauty, considers humanity to be constituted by males only. Women are considered not only outside of humanity but a threat to it as well."

Concerning that threat, Mernissi sees one of the differences between the West and Islam in the respective understanding of female sexuality. The West, she says, sees women as biologically inferior and sexually passive; in Islam, there is no insistence as such that women are biologically inferior and they are seen as sexually active.

"What stimulates the greater control and domination of women in Islam is a fear of unregulated, free, self-determining, self-actualising female sexuality."

Mernissi illustrates this with a comparison of Freud's ideas and those of the 11th century theologian Gazali.

In some ways Islam has a healthier view of sex--sexuality isn't pathologised, men and women's sexual instincts are seen as basically the same, lovemaking is appreciated as both a necessity and pleasure, and women's sexual satisfaction is very important (or at least taught to be important).

However, the actual social arrangements of heterosexual relations belie these theoretical levelling ideas. Muslim marriage squarely favours the master, not the slave, and it does so to the extremes where practically any kind of abuse is possible without repercussions for the man, up to and including killing the woman.

Mernissi introduced me to the idea that what Islam fears and condemns above all, and does everything to destroy, is heterosexual love. This is how she puts it and I must admit this angle is new and strange to me, although I'd have no trouble recognising the obstacles Islam places to heterosexual relations.

The destabilisation, the prevention of conjugal love is achieved through the institutions of polygamy and repudiation, both a sole male prerogative. Polygamy is widely consciously understood as humiliating and debasing to woman, and used precisely to debase her and facilitate her exploitation. But it also reinforces the tensions and the fear of women who, remember, are seen as sexually active and threatening, yet through polygamy are rendered even more sexually frustrated, and therefore even more of a danger to social order. (Justifying even more control etc.)

Repudiation breaks the marital bond so easily that it further reinforces woman's insignificance. The point of all of this is to cement a woman's unimportance to the man as an individual, being only a means to satisfy his sexual and procreative needs. Finally, asserting paternity as sole ownership of children also works to diminish the woman, as not even her role as the mother of a man's children is given any value.

In such conditions it's no wonder heterosexual love has little opportunity to develop, and less meaning.

Another thing I wasn't quite aware of until Mernissi is just how Prophet Muhammad's sexual behaviour shaped Islam and the destiny of Muslim women. I knew it did, but not all the details.

The details are sordid.

After the death of his first wife Khadija when he was fifty, Muhammad married twelve more times, and besides indulged in some unspecified number of relations with concubines and other women he didn't marry. Three of the marriages were not consummated because the women changed their minds and left (all three were relatively more "free" tribal women who seem to have had second thoughts about sharing a husband). One was, notoriously, to a girl so young she was not yet eighteen when he died at sixty-two. Mernissi also brings up two incidents that paint a regrettable picture of Muhammad and his sexual legacy. He is said to have said to his favourite grandson Hassan "you resemble me physically and morally", when Hassan boasted of having 200 wives, or rather having had 200 wives, as he was wont to marry and divorce them in fours at a time, moving on to new stock all the time.

And, Muhammad once got excited by the sight of his adopted son's wife, whereupon the adopted son offered to divorce her so that prophet could marry her, never mind the dozen or so wives back home already.

How different might Islam have been if Muhammad hadn't acted the randy old goat after his wife died? If he'd remained a widower or married just the one woman again? It seems certain that the women's condition within it would have been quite different.

Another point I wish to note is that according to Mernissi there is a wealth of data on pre-Islamic practice but very little analysis of it (presumably up to date at least). This reminded me of similar remarks elsewhere regarding Muslim data and sources on slavery. It points to a widespread problem of repression of scholarship that may (rightly or wrongly supposed) challenge Islamic doctrine (or politics).

The fourth part of the book deals with the specific situation in Morocco (data from 1971) but equally sheds light much wider. It saddened me to compare Mernissi's hopes with recent reports from the country by Leila Slimani. No doubt there has been change, quantitatively. But qualitatively? So little. show less

This was an early LT recommendation - and what a great one. Fatima Mernissi is now a feminist academic, and in this book she recounts stories from her formative years, growing up in a harem in Fez, Morocco, in the 1940s.

The French colonists have had relatively little impact on tradition, but a wave of social change is sweeping across the Arab world, and many of the older women in the harem - Mernissi's aunts and cousins - want to embrace it. Some of Mernissi's uncles have already left the show more harem, tired of communal family life.

But for the ones who remain, the ways they can challenge convention are relatively limited - for some, merely abandoning traditional embroidery patterns in favour of a bird spreading its wings leads to criticism.

But Mernissi shows us very clearly that although these women have no power, they do have agency. They admire the new Arab film stars and singers, although they can only leave the compound to go to the cinema on very rare occasions. Cousin Chama tries to run past the guard to go to the cinema, and puts on plays on the terrace about early Arab feminists. ("The problem with some of Chama's favourite feminists, especially the early ones, was that they did not do much besides write, since they were locked up in harems. That meant that there was not much action to be staged, and we just had to sit and listen to Chama recite their protests and complaints in monologue.")

This is an easy-to-read memoir which is also an eye-opening insight into a world which is frequently misunderstood. I honestly think that everyone should read it - my aunt, for example, would never be induced to read a book if told it was about the early years of a feminist, still less a Muslim one, but I think that she would be fascinated by the stories and charmed by the style.

The terrace exit route was seldom watched, for the simple reason that getting to it from the street was a difficult undertaking. You needed to be quite good at three skills: climbing, jumping, and agile landing. Most of the women could climb up and jump fairly well, but not many could land gracefully. So, from time to time, someone would come in with a bandaged ankle, and everyone would know just what she'd been up to. The first time I came down from the terrace with bleeding knees, Mother explained to me that a woman's chief problem in life was figuring out how to land. 'Whenever you are about to embark on an adventure,' she said, 'you have to think about the landing. Not about the takeoff. So whenever you feel like flying, think about how and where you'll end up.' show less

Fatima Mernissi’s work in Dreams of Trespass provides a captivating tale of a young adolescent girl who intertwines history and memory into an account that explores the themes of women’s solidarity, the nature of power, and the dichotomy between keeping tradition and being modernized. Through her storytelling and personal anecdotes of her life in a harem, she responds to one of the fundamental questions that arises in the book: where and how do women exercise power in the Islamic world show more where the geographical and political boundaries are influx? During the late nineteenth and twentieth century, with many of the institutions (e.g., the slow disappearance of harems) and attitudes of the people shifting, women in particular acquired previously unfamiliar roles in society. These roles granted them new rights such as the freedom of movement and fashion and increased educational opportunities. However, it is also important to recognize that females lost an important aspect of their community culture by the absence of homosocial spaces.

The main paradox of the memoir is that Fatima is who she is because of the harem but at the same time, she does not want the harem. Despite this, she found meaning and self discovery by living there. Here, the boundaries of herself are expansive because she was living with a large group of women with diverse experiences that impacted one another. The book illustrates that Mernissi captured the positive elements of the harem and in turn, the publishing of her memoir is proof that one can escape and be on the powerful side. Indeed, the author poses contradictions with her critique of the establishment yet she confirms her status as a successful female by embodying everything her mother hoped and dreamed of for her in a life outside of the harem. show less

Frustrated by charges that feminism was a Western ideal, and that Moroccan women had nothing to complain about, Mernissi conducted a series of interviews with women from across the country, of different generations and classes, to prove the critics wrong. I'm so glad she compiled the interviews--they are priceless. Some of the women were born ~1900, and yet the interviews of those born 50 years later are startlingly similar. Huge changes occurred, and yet the same experiences kept popping show more up: not enough money, no control, lots of family interaction. A fascinating book, rife with notations on the details of food preparation, birth control, spiritual beliefs, and social mores that used to be unmentionable in history books. show less