Choice, Freedom, and Democracy: Fatema Mernissi's Solutions for Women's Issues

Fatema Mernissi's name first gained widespread attention in Iran when a judge ordered the withdrawal of her book "Women and Islam" from bookstores, which had been translated into Persian. However, the sale of over 1600 copies of this book was enough to familiarize Persian speakers with the thoughts of this pioneering Arab thinker. Nira Tohidi, a university professor in the U.S. and an expert on gender, women, and development, stated on Radio Farda that "Fatema Mernissi was one of the influential figures, researchers, writers, and women's rights activists in the Islamic world, and anyone who wants to research gender issues in these countries cannot ignore her. Her writings are so foundational, important, and impactful that we must familiarize ourselves with her theories and works to understand the Arab world. She was one of the enduring figures and pioneers of women's studies in the Middle East and North Africa." While Mernissi's main research focus was on the role of women in Islamic societies, many recognized her with titles such as defender of Islamic feminism or even the founder of Islamic feminism. Tohidi rejects these titles, stating, "Mernissi underwent a process of intellectual transformation. I do not reduce her to Islamic feminism or any specific type of feminism because her discussions go beyond these schools or types of feminism. "Women in the Unconscious of Muslims" was one of Mernissi's earliest writings, published under the pseudonym "Fitna Sabah." This book provided a psychoanalytic, psychological, and sociological critique of the mentalities and intellectual abuses that Muslims, particularly Muslim men, suffer from. Because this book was a harsh critique of conventional Islam, scholars, and religious authorities, Mernissi could not publish it under her name, and it was later banned in many countries. However, Mernissi moved beyond that book and realized that merely critiquing religious texts could not explain the problem. She understood that women's issues are not solely caused by religious perspectives or beliefs and laws but are much broader than that. Mernissi was skilled and knowledgeable in Islamic studies, and she also became fluent in French and English. She studied at the Sorbonne in France and Brandeis University in the U.S., obtaining her doctorate in sociology and political science from the Sorbonne. As a result, she gradually became a writer and researcher who was familiar with both the Western world and Western feminist discourses and the history of her own country and Islam. She had done extensive fieldwork and endured many hardships. She had studied ancient Islamic texts, particularly hadiths, one by one and examined their historical contexts. Mernissi rejected many hadiths that were misogynistic and highly gender-biased with historical evidence showing that none of them had any validity. She argued that these hadiths were products of the conscious and unconscious desires and motivations of patriarchal men. Although Tohidi states that Mernissi's ideas go beyond prevailing feminist waves, her thoughts on women in the Islamic world and her critical revisions of the Quran, hadith, and Islamic texts significantly helped create intellectual tools for a new wave of Islamic feminists in the Arab world to challenge social discrimination and gender inequalities. Tohidi discusses Mernissi's views, especially her book "Women and Men in the Islamic World," stating, "Mernissi's main argument is that we must separate the Quran from other Islamic constructs. Jurisprudence and Sharia are historical constructs created by patriarchal men and have no sanctity. These are things that some people have formulated based on their economic and political interests. Today, fundamentalists obsessively raise the issue of controlling women's bodies and the hijab due to power and political motivations. There is no decree in the Quran that women must cover their hair, nor is there such an obsession with controlling women's bodies and separating men and women in Islamic and Quranic law. Mernissi demonstrates this from both an internal religious perspective and a contemporary perspective based on human rights and global conventions. Mernissi's advantage over other intellectuals is that while she is familiar with and deconstructs male-made jurisprudential laws and relies on the Quran itself and reinterprets it, rejecting the manipulations that have occurred in the Quran to empower women in Muslim countries, she does not limit herself to religion and faith. She emphasizes economic-political issues and especially democracy and attempts to analyze Muslim men's fear of freedom, particularly the right to choose. Mernissi historically examines the role of colonialism and assesses the impacts of economic weaknesses and underdevelopment. She seeks to understand how Muslim men can be empowered and overcome their unhealthy and obsessive mentalities to create a democratic and liberating society for both women and men. While Mernissi worked on the issue of hijab and emphasized it, she does not reduce women's issues to hijab but considers the issue of choice, freedom, and democracy as the fundamental solution. Fatema Mernissi passed away on November 30, 2015, at the age of 75.