This is the Indian publication of Mernissi's "The Veil and the Male Elite," which is an excellent book. It isn't for those unfamiliar with Islam, however. It does set forth some very satisfying and well-supported views on the role of women in Islam, which -- contrary to popular belief -- has never meant to be subservient or oppressed. This is a thoughtful and passionate discussion of women's rights in Islam, as well as a defense of Islam as a proponent of women's rights. Recommended, either in this version or in the U.S. publication (the latter of which is actually of much nicer material).

The Moroccan scholar Fatima Mernissi is frequently upheld as the Muslim world's leading feminist thinker. Her book 'Beyond the Veil' has become standard college-reading for most people investigating the subject of women's rights in the Islamic tradition. This book, however, 'Islam and Democracy,' is a disorganized rant.

One suspects that many of these "chapters" were intended for individual essays, or perhaps were rushed into publication before they could take coherent shape as a book. Mernissi is all over the place. In the expanse of five or six pages she might make great sweeping claims about the Muslim sense of powerlessness, then claim that that powerlessness is not universal at all, but rather uniquely female, then blame Muslim despots for tyrannizing their people and preventing democracy, then blame the west for attacking and trying to overthrow Muslim despots (i.e., Saddam Hussein.) Then a few pages later she might drag out apocryphal stores of the assassination of medieval Caliphs, to demonstrate that Muslims leaders have never been strong enough!

Mernissi lavishes mythology upon fact, to the point where it is impossible to tell whether or not her use of examples is to be trusted. Despite the scientific-sounding nature of its title, 'Islam and Democracy' reads more like literary criticism: an argument about the meanings of fictions, which are then applied to the world and linked by some grand theory which - lo and behold - can be 'proven' by using more fiction as examples. It should not be surprising to find that excerpts from the Arabian Nights recur over and over again in her text.

Equally troubling is the fact that her main critique of Islam centers upon what she sees as its lack of respect for individual creativity and freedom - its adhesion to a slavish and unquestioning belief in scripture, yet she samples liberally from the Hadith - stories about the life of Muhammad and the early Muslims that even many Imams are skeptical of. In other words, she expects the reader to believe that her selection of scripture disproves other peoples' selections of scripture. And she can't even get them all straight: relating the story of an early Muslim martyr, she claims in one sentence that he bore his torture "and didn't utter a word" (20), and two sentences later, claims he was chanting the whole time.

In spite of all this, reading this book is still an education, of sorts. Much of this is due to the translation skills of Mary Jo Lakeland, who gives us a tour de force of Arabic etymology, and does great justice to the complex layers of meaning of this language, whose root words are so flexible and susceptible to subtle manipulation. If you would like to get a sense - albeit a dreadfully confused sense - of where one pole of Muslim critical theory stood in the 1990s, then this could be a useful text. If, however, you were hoping to learn something substantial about Islam and Democracy, you will be disappointed.

In her book, Islam and Democracy, Fatima Mernissi, a Moroccan author, draws back on her personal experiences, not only as a Moslem but also as a woman, to explain why democracy has not caught on in the Arab countries and what are the prospects for the future. Throughout the major part of her book, she demonstrates how the Islamic community is chained up by a set of fears that it would have to overcome to establish democracy.
The analysis is brilliant and gives religious, philosophical and historical reasons to the incapacity of the Islamic world to put in action a real democracy.
It is only in the last pages that Mernissi claims without much developing that "Our liberation will come through a rereading of our past and a reapropriation of all that has structured our civilization". She sheds however some light on two factors of optimism. The first can surprise an occidental: She thinks that the shock of the Gulf War was so great that the Muslims have emerged "free from fear". The second is carrying hope: She believes that the move of women toward self affirmation and freedom will transform the nature of the state and lead to democracy.

The first fear Mernissi points out is the traditional fear of the foreign West, "Garb", the place of darkness. Middle eastern political leaders have put in place the political institutions that apparently make the West strong, but have not educated the people to use them out of fear that their authority be challenged. These institutions soon turn corrupt and are viewed as decadent. Mernissi insists on the ancient "fear of the Imam" that has marked the history of Islam. The ruler still fears the opposition forces that have constantly rebelled and tried to kill the leader. She notes - and this is quite up to date - that with the assassination of Ali, the rebel tradition has linked dissidence with terrorism.
Thus "making obedience to the Imam correspond to obedience to God became the program and the law of Arab regimes" and still is.

On the contrary, the freedom of thought is identified with the Kharijite rebellion and disorder. To save unity the politicians of the twenties chose the tradition of obedience and not the democratic freedom of thought. Mernissi reminds us with nostalgia that another path, that of the sovereignty of the individual and freedom of opinion, were possible in the frame of Islam. The Mu'tazila philosophy brought up the place of reason and personal opinion. It was adopted by the first Abbasids during the "century of openness". Mernissi however passes very fast over the fact that this flowering Muslim thought, known as "falasifa" was an exception and that if "the concept of reason was connected to criminal activities which destroyed the solidarity of the Umma", it is because this idea was solidly founded in Islam. "The Muslim is he who believes and obeys". Mernissi tells us that modernizing without granting the freedom of thought as in Tunisia and Algeria has created confusion and brought fundamentalism opposition. She targets two fundalisms, the government fondalism, the official culture which serves as a barrier against democratic education which is feared, and opposition fundamentalism. Mernissi points out that the Arab countries that have signed the Charter of the United Nations as well as the Human Rights, had been accepting engagements without referring to their historical traditions. It is therefore not surprising if they have difficulties to hold these engagements inspired from another tradition than their own.
This fear of the freedom of thought comes from the origins of Islam and is linked to the fear of the past and of individualism. Mernissi tells us that certain features of democracy could be compared to those of the Jahiliyya, a period mostly suppressed and occulted as the example of what is incompatible with Islam, a period of arrogant individualism through the cult of the idols, crime and instability against which Mohammad fought. Traditional Islam is based on the sacrifice of the individual for the sake of the Umma's unity and solidarity. Personal opinions are considered close to a sin, where the individual forgets the interests for the community in a moment of passion.

Mernissi explains the fear of women by the interesting idea that women in power are linked in collective memory with the violence and murder of these old ages. At the time of the Jahiliyya, the goddesses of war and death were honored by bloody sacrifices. Monotheist order thus required that the female should be bared from the sphere of power which coincided with the sacred. Veiling women and separating them thus eradicates disorder. Body and sexuality were also seen as "the fortress of the condemnable sovereign individuality". Yet, says Mernissi, the Qur'an defends the equality of all the human beings and guarantees this equality in exchange for the surrender of individualism to God. Equality of all explains, according to Mernissi, the rapid expansion of Islam.

Finally, even if her book tends more toward pessimism on the near future of democracy, her ideas on the influence that women could have on the development of democracy in Islamic countries, even if they appear very optimistic, seem promising to me. She writes "Women demand renunciation of the ideal of the homogeneous city divided in two hierarchical spaces, where only one sex manages politics and decision making". She brings rightly to attention that "Women are the only ones who publicly assert their right to self affirmation as individuals" and that "their claim will transform the nature of the state".

Mernissi has also an interesting view on the consequences of the Gulf War, the "ultimate horror" for Muslims which put in light "the lack of democracy, the dependence and the powerlessness" of the Arab States who were unable to protect the Muslims. She thinks that the shock was so great that the Muslims have emerged "free of fear" accepting to make "a perilous jump into the unknown...as the least dangerous thing". It is to note that the book was published in 1992, and it is not certain that Mrs. Mernissi still maintains her opinion on this liberation of the fears. There too, she seems overly optimistic.

Mernissi concludes her book by telling the story of the Simorgh birds, to show that the future success of Arab societies depends upon its citizens' resourcefulness and independence from the state. It is still a long flight away, but it should be possible. One can share this hope as she assert that "The Arab world is about to take off for the reason that everybody, with the fundamentalists in the lead (even if they look towards the past) wants change".

Will democracy ever be possible in the volatile Arab world, and can human rights be respected under fundamentalist rules? Islamic scholar Mernissi examines fundamentalist thinking in the Middle East, considering how those on opposing sides use the same sacred texts and those who use them for violence, and providing keys to understanding Muslim and Western perceptions.

This was a great, easy reading book that many people could really use as a tool for learning about a different culture. In this book, Fatima tells us about her life as a child growing up in a Harem, and the trials and tribulations that go along with that. Throughout the story, one of the major themes that is asked over and over is what is a Harem? Is it a place with four walls like the Harem she lived in? Or is it like her grandmother's Harem which is out in the country with no walls, only open fields. Fatima's mother's role is crutial in this book because her mother is so against everything that has to do with the Harem. She wants her two daughters to grow up and have every opportunity they can in life, unlike the lack of opportinities her mother had. To do this, Fatima's mother dresses the girls in western style dress with frills and lace. Fatima's father does not seem to say much when his wife does this, unless it is a holiday, then the girls are expected to be in traditional attire. The book itself was great and I would highly recomend it! The details Fatima Marnissi uses in describing the women's lives is fantastic, as is her point of view that this is being told by a child. Any age that is studying this area, or time period in history would enjoy this book as did I!

Subtitled, Tales of a Harem Girlhood, this is a most fascinating tale of the realities of a Moroccan harem. Most Westerners take the word harem and think Turkish harem - hundreds of women floating around large tiled rooms waiting to serve the lord and master. Mernissi, a western schooled sociologist, feminist, and scholar, takes us into the life of a young girl born into a family in Fez (in Western Morocco) in the 1940's. Her harem is not the rooms of I-Dream-of-Jeannie look-alikes but rather the complex social structures of the Moroccan/Muslim family in the middle of this century. Her harem is the world of women, daughters, mothers, aunts, and grandmothers who live 'inside' the urban home (but interestingly, live more freely out on the country farm). We learn about the feelings she and her brother (with whom she is close) experience when they come of an age to be separated; he relegated to the world of the men, and she to the hidden world of the harem. Mostly, though, this beautiful book tells the stories of the women in Fatima's harem who have dreams and fantasies (that will never come true), including the dreams of trespass into the outside world, the world of men. After having worked in Morocco in the early 1990s, I could see that much has changed for Moroccan women, but thoughout the Arab world there still exist plenty who still have those dreams of trespass.

I began this book with many typical Western preconceived notions. I expected the exoticized harem of one sheik with many wives that we hear about in the movies and in literature. However, this discussion of a real harem without all the exotic trappings shows Mernissi's family life and her experiences growing up while finding her place in the world. It is a story of family, but also Mernissi's own feminist story of breaking through the patriarchal walls and gaining a higher education and social standing despite tradition. Telling the story from the perspective of a female child coming of age shows the reader how far Mernissi came from her childhood locked within the walls of the harem. Mernissi's mothers, aunts, and cousins, while not able to escape the harem themselves, plant the seeds within Mernissi that allow her to find her own path in the world outside the harem.

I hope the author takes another, longer tour of the US. Most of her conclusions about the "harems" of "Western men" are only applicable to European men, far better educated and more culturally refined than us guys here. We surely do have or desire our harems today--a man's "stable" of pretty women who will let him get away with making the rounds as often as time and money allows. A huge issue she raises is control: how do guys keep their women? And how do those women, who at some level consent to being kept, fight back and control their man? What role does beauty play, what role intelligence, what about economic empowerment, and what about religious values? How does jealousy impact the decisions made by both the women and the man? And perhaps most importantly, is the US truly making progress toward women and men treating each other as equals? Or have we just found more sophisticated ways of manipulating each other? The author suggests Westerners should be much slower to criticize Islam, because we have our own problems that are as bad or worse. Very thought-provoking.

After reading a few other critiques on this title, a few reviewers may need to reconsider the intent of the text. Mernissi is hardly deliniating a definitive narrative on the sexual mentality of men/women or East/West; however, she provides a series of impressions that can create a complex, intriguing innerdialogue as well as spark useful discussion among adults interested in the related topic dynamics. Overall a wonderfully written book intermingling Mernissi's personal experiences, history, literature, and art. I highly endorse this book.

Fatima Mernissi's book, Scheherazade Goes West, is one of those rare books that you start reading and simply can not put down, not wanting it to end.
It is witty and delightfull book but more important, it touches upon some fundemental questions about the meeting of East and West, in art, fiction, as well as in every day life, questions that have never been addressed like this before.
Mernissi does something which is both rare and refreshing: she dares ask questions and her quest for answers takes her (and the reader) to a journey which ultimatly touches upon the universal questions concerninig not only the complicated, mystifaying relations between East and West, but also, and far more intersting, between Men and Women, and how they see each other from both sides of the geographical, cultural distance.

This book is like going through someone else's medicine cabinet. A fascinating look into the homes and bedrooms of the Middle East from a scholarly feminist perspective. The only problem is, it's a bit too scholarly to be a really quick and concise read. Still, Well worth buying.

The topic of male-female dynamics in Muslim society is one of the main issues covered in the book, Beyond the Veil, by Fatima Mernissi. Mernissi covers a wide range of categories, all of which pertain to the female position in a Muslim society. Though much of the data comes from Moroccan society, the general subject matter attempts to describe all Muslim society. This book has two parts, one of which focuses on the traditional view of women, and the second, which focuses on a more modern and changing view of women¡¯s place in society. A fascinating look at women in Muslim society, this book pushes the reader to question previous biases, and take a look at women in a Muslim society from a Muslim perspective.
Beyond the Veil starts out by contrasting views on female sexuality. One view is that of Imman Ghazali, and the other view is that of Sigmund Freud. Ghazali claims that the female sexuality is active, and equal to the male sexuality. Therefore, females need to be restrained in order to prevent fitna (chaos) in the social order. Freud, on the other hand, sees female sexuality as passive, and therefore masochistic. Ironically, both theories attempt to prove the same point: that women, as uncontrollable beings, are destructive to the social order and need to be restrained.
Part two of the book starts out with interviews and data collection from Moroccan society. This information is mostly focused around sexual desegregation. Mernissi¡¯s conclusions basically say that the traditional/older generation is more sexually desegregated, while the more modernized/younger generation encourages desegregation. She also points out that rural societies are more sexually traditional than urban societies.
This book reveals much about Muslim society in a simplified manner. Mernissi draws her writings from various sources, including historical viewpoints, other writers on the topic, and interviews with Muslim women.
Beyond the Veil is not simply a one-dimensional view of male-female dynamics in Muslim society. The book covers all aspects of relationships between males and females, as well as the various positions women can take in a Muslim society. Mernissi allows for the reader to look three-dimensionally at the Muslim society, especially in regards to sexual space boundaries and desegregation, and form his or her personal opinion about the topic. Mernissi makes it somewhat simpler for the reader to understand the goals of the book by outlining the various dimensions as well as writing conclusions that draw from the section but also incorporate other ideas.
The objective of this book, explaining male-female dynamics in Muslim society, was quite clear and the writings of Mernissi certainly operationalized that objective. A non-fiction book that relied heavily on breakdowns of various interviews, Beyond the Veil, was more analytic than descriptive. However, this was an extremely effective way of scrutinizing the subject at hand. The information provided in the book would be particularly significant to those who are not familiar with Muslim society and wish to learn more about the ways in which males and females interact in this society.
Beyond the Veil explained many things to me, including the reasons behind female desegregation in Muslim society. Mernissi is thorough in her dissertation of male-female dynamics, and encourages the reader to form his or her own opinions about the topic. Beyond the Veil is a captivating look at the past, present, and future positions of women in a deeply complex Muslim society.

Excellent book on the female condition in many Muslim societies. ... More books like this need to be written to stimulate debate and hopefully change.

Mernissi is possessed by the insecurity of her traumatic childhood. The very title of the book "Forgotten Queens of Islam" completely discounts the reality that women even in today's Islamic societies weild political power and involvement unparalleled by women in any other society including the West. The reality remains that these "Queens" of Islam were never forgotten [Raziya sultan is still fresh in my mind from my high school history class in India]. The tradition of women ruling muslim countries was rarely broken as is witnessed by women such as Megawati, Vice President of Indonesia [largest muslim county], Benazir Bhutto, ex-Prime Minister of Pakistan [2nd largest muslim country], Shaiyk Hasina and Begum Khalida Zia, Prime Ministers of Bangladesh [3rd largest muslim country], Massumeh Ebtekar, Vice President of Iran [4th largest muslim country], Tansu Ciller, the Prime Minister of Turkey... and the list goes on. To be frank, the idea of feminism is a joke in the realm of Islam. Mernissi is fooling the westerners by selling books about how women are supposedly "oppressed" in muslim countries!!

The 1st part describes definitions of words like power, caliph, queen and harem and how these definitons exclude women from power. The 2nd part describes briefly some Islamic Queens. A chapter with the title "The Queens of Yemen" mainly describes the life and death of Ali, son-in-law of the Prophet, and the Shi'ite - Sunni controversy. The book concludes with some thoughts on a 'Medina democracy'.

Although the book could have focussed more on actual Islamic Queens, it still is a rare book about an interesting, but hardly explored subject.

Mernissi recounts the extraordinary stories of fifteen queens and reflects on the implications for the ways in which politics is practiced in Islam today, a world in which women are largely excluded form the political domain. Essential not only for those interested in the history of Islam, but also for all those committed to contextualizing women's history and to multiculturalizing feminist discourse.

I find it interesting that another reader found, within the pages of this book, justification for a Muslim woman wearing a piece of cloth to cover her head. My perception of Ms. Mernissi's views is quite the opposite. What she was trying to say throughout the whole book can be summed up in one of the final questions she asks in her conclusion: "How did the tradition succeed in transforming the Muslim woman into that submissive, marginal creature who buries herself and only goes out into the world timidly and huddled in her veils?" Mernissi then questions why a Muslim man needs such a "mutilated companion." These ideas are what make this book so important. Mernissi clearly reveals the reasons why the tradition of hiding under a veil came about. Many Muslim women feel honored to wear a hijab (head covering) because, for one reason, they feel it earns them greater respect. Mernissi's view is that when the tradition first started, most (if not all) women were considered slaves. The covering of the head signified a woman was not to be considered a slave, but someone who had converted to Islam. I highly recommend this book to every woman, Muslim and non-Muslim, (and man, for that matter) who questions the present treatment of women in the Islamic religion.

I used this book 6 years ago for my thesis on Islam and feminism. It cleared up many preconceptions I had about Muslim women and the religion of Islam itself. I never revisited my research about Islam until September 11, 2001. This books shows the historical reasons behind oppressive interpretations and explain Muhammad's egalitarian vision. I use this book to educate people and show that the violent, woman-oppressing Islam is a product of hisotry and culture and not religion. This is not a time for merciless overreaction; it is a time to learn about those things few understand.

Fatima Mernissi's book is a fascinating excursion through her own journey of discovery. She takes us from a man's put-down of her with the Hadith "those who entrust their affairs to a woman will never know prosperity", to an enlightened understanding of the historical context in which the oppressive traditions of Islam arose.

After explaining her background in the introduction she deals with the above hadith and how it came about, she analyzes the role of women in early Islam and especially the prophet's apparent view of women and a very in-depth and detailed discussion of how the veil, or hijab, came into being for Muslim women.

She shows that the denial of women's rights was not the intention of Allah, as the source of Holy Law, nor of Mohammed, but arose in the context of the pre-existing social values of the Arab world of the time, and of the vested political interests and power struggles of the period following Mohammed's death.

The study is very detailed and quite arcane, and although Ms Mernissi takes a lot of care to explain terminology and context, it really requires some background knowledge of Islam and Arabs. The book's main target audience is Moslem women, to show they do have rights within Islam, and possibly Moslem men. I believe westerners can learn from it, but are probably better served by reading more general books on Islamic history and culture. In particular non-Moslems need to understand that Islam is not a single culture, but in reality many traditions under one umbrella, in much the same way that Christendom encompasses many religious and cultural traditions.