Fatima Mernissi's "The Veil and the Male Elite"

Mernissi, Fatima. Women and Islam: An Historical and Theological Enquiry. Trans. Mary Jo Lakeland. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991. (Also titled The Veil And The Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation Of Women's Rights In Islam: A Feminist Interpretation of Women’s Rights in Islam)

Fatima Mernissi is a Moroccan writer and sociologist, born into a middle-class family in 1940. She studied political science at the Sorbonne and earned her doctorate from Brandeis University in 1957. She is popularly noted as an “Islamic feminist” because of her deep interest and studies in women’s roles in Islam, and she is concerned with the historical development of Islamic thought and how it should be viewed in modern times. Her other works include Dreams of Trespass: Dreams of a Harem Girlhood, Women’s Rebellion and Islamic Memory, Forgotten Queens of Islam, and Doing Daily Battle.

In Women and Islam, Mernissi argues that the reason women’s rights are a problem for some modern Muslim men is not because of the Quran; it is because these rights contradict the interest of the male elite. She believes that religious texts are often manipulated, either for ideological advantage or material advantage. Since many of the original teachings of the Prophet have been manipulated by misogynists, Mernissi explicates, Muslims must be careful when accepting certain anti-women hadith as authentic. Mernissi also challenges the idea of hadiths accepted as “authentic” by Al-Bukhari, as well as modern scholars today, without the inclusion of Aisha’s or the Prophet’s other wives’ rebuttal to those hadiths. Citing examples of “rebellious” women like Sukayna, granddaughter of Caliph Ali who was divorced at least four times and who fought with her husbands to prevent them from practicing polygamy, Mernissi points out that Muslims are suffering from amnesia and need a reminder about their past, a past in which women were respected for their intellect and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with men, as did the Prophet’s wives Aisha and Umm Salama, as well as his great-granddaughter Sukayna.  

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Important Texts for a Gender/Islam Course

I'm taking a class called Gender, Sexuality, and Islam. I want to post my ENTIRE syllabus here for that class! But I first need to ask my teacher's permission, I'd think.

Required Texts:

Ahmed, Leila. Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate (Yale University Press, 1992).

Ali, Kecia. Sexual Ethics in Islam (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2007).

Kugle, Scott. Homosexuality in Islam: Islamic Reflection on Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims (Oxford: Oneworld Publication, 2010).

Mernissi, Fatima. Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Muslim Societies by Fatima Mernissi  (also titled The Veil And The Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation Of Women's Rights In Islam) (Perseus Books, 1991; originally in French, 1987).

Stowasser, Barbara. Women in the Qur'an, Traditions, and Interpretation (New York: Oxford U Press, 1994).

Wadud, Amina. Qur'an and Woman:Rereading the Sacred Text from a Woman's Perspective (Oxford University Press, 1999). 

Recommended Texts:

Barlas, Asma. Believing Women in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur'an (University of Texas Press, 2002). 

Spellberg, D. A. Politics, Gender, and the Islamic Past: The Legacy of 'Aisha Bint Abi Bakr (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).

Supplementary Texts:

Abou el-Fadl, Khaled. Speaking in God's Name: Islamic Law, Authority and Women (Oxford: Oneworld, 2001).

Haeri, Shaela. The Law of Desire: Temporary Marriage in Iran (Syracuse University Press, 1989).

Hambly, Gavin (ed.), Women in the Medieval Islamic World (St. Martin's Press, 1999).

Musallam, Basim, Sex and Society in Islam: Birth Control before the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 1983). 

Safi, Omid (ed.), Progressive Muslims: On Gender, Justice, and Pluralism (Oxford: Oneworld, 2003).
 
Ruth Vanita (ed.), Queering India: Same-Sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society (Routledge, 2002).

In the next blog post, I will share what our last three assignments have been about. They're really interesting and stimulating topics, and I hope that those who hear about them will try doing them on their own.

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