Born: 27 September 1940, Morocco
Died: 30 November 2015
Country most active: Morocco
Also known as: Fatima, فاطمة مرنيسي
Moroccan feminist writer and sociologist Fatema Mernissi is remembered as one of the earliest advocates for second-wave Islamic feminism. Writing in French, Arabic and English, her work has also been translated into more than 20 languages.
After studying at Mohammed V University in Rabat, Mernissi earned her doctorate in sociology at Brandeis University in the U.S. She published Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Modern Muslim Society in 1975, advocating for religious reform and propelling a movement in Muslim communities against misogynistic interpretations of Muslim holy texts. She published La femme dans l’inconscient musulman (Women in the Muslim Unconscious) in 1982 under the pseudonym Fatna Ait Sabbah, examining the contradiction of religious texts demanding women’s sexual restraint versus popular texts’s depictions of women’s sexual urges and behaviors.
Mernissi’s Doing Daily Battle (Le Maroc raconte par ses femmes, 1983) featured interviews with working-class women in urban and rural settings alike. She would later organize writing workshops in the 1990s to empower women to document their own experiences. 1988’s The Veil and the Male Elite interrogated and deconstructed the historical context surrounding the words and actions of the Prophet Muhammad as recorded by his companions and passed down through religious authorities. Although challenging arguably the most important core of Islam, she demonstrated the unreliability (and misogyny) of two of those companions, juxtaposed with other elements of the prophet’s purported behavior. In Islam and Democracy: Fear of the Modern World (1992), she explored the dual threats of women and modernity to men’s power in the Arab world. Forgotten Queens of Islam (1997) highlighted powerful female rulers in Muslim communities from history to counter beliefs about women’s abilities to lead.
Mernissi’s autobiographical Dreams of Trespass (1994) described her experiences growing up in a privileged but sheltered environment of a harem. The responses she encountered led to 2001’s Scheherazade Goes West: Different Cultures, Different Harems, contrasting societal expectations of women’s behaviors and bodies in Arab and Western contexts.
This entry relies on information sourced from The Dictionary of African Biography.