Fatema Mernissi quotes

Fatema Mernissi was a pioneering Moroccan sociologist, writer, and feminist activist. Her research challenged traditional narratives about women in Islam and advocated for gender equality in the Arab world. She became renowned for her influential works on women's roles and rights in Muslim societies. Here are 42 of her quotes:

One cannot understand what's happening to women in the Middle East if they don't realize that the mothers are a strong, progressive force. The mothers push the daughters to get out of the harem, to get the education, to achieve what they could not even dream of.

Fatema Mernissi

I go to the hamam and put henna on my skin and hair. Even when I go to New York, I let the shower run hot to create a steam hamam at my hotel. But when I finish with the bath, I put on expensive French creams.

Fatema Mernissi

There has been a terrible hemorrhage of educated women to the West where they can flourish. I understand, but it is terrible. We must stay home.

Fatema Mernissi

The real mistake of women was to let the memoir, the collective, the history, space of producing history - to let it in the hands of men.

Fatema Mernissi

Writing is one of the most ancient forms of prayer. To write is to believe communication is possible that other people are good, that you can awaken their generosity and their desire to do better.

Fatema Mernissi

The most precious gift God gave humans is reason. Its best use is the search for knowledge. To know the human environment, to know the earth and galaxies, is to know God. Knowledge (science) is the best form of prayer.

Fatema Mernissi

Nature is woman's best friend,' she [Yasmina] often said. 'If you're having troubles, you just swim in the water, stretch out in a field, or look up at the stars. That's how a woman cures her fears'.

Fatema Mernissi

I am intelligent enough to be critical towards the West and take what I need and reject what is bad for me.

Fatema Mernissi

Being frozen into the passive position of an object whose very existence depends on the eye of its beholder turn the educated modern Western women into a harem slave.

Fatema Mernissi

I, as a Muslim woman living in 1993, I want to have two things - the mosque and the satellite, both at the same time. And no one can mutilate me by telling me I cannot have the mosque or the Koran.

Fatema Mernissi

Maturity is when you start feeling the motion of zaman (time) as if it is a sensuous caress. p.216.

Fatema Mernissi

Morocco is such a beautiful place. It's incredibly beautiful. And also it is captivating place because for a writer, you feel that you make impact.

Fatema Mernissi

If women's rights are a problem for some modern Muslim men, it is neither because of the Quran nor the Prophet, nor the Islamic tradition, but simply because those rights conflict with the interests of a male elite.

Fatema Mernissi

Morocco is such a beautiful place. It's incredibly beautiful. And also it is captivating place because for a writer, you feel that you make impact. I mean, when I write something in the press, the day after in the fish market, people will be discussing it.

Fatema Mernissi

Contrary to what many Westerners believe, Islam has a rich tradition of secular painting in spite of its ban on images. It is only in religious rituals that the use of pictorial representation is totally prohibited.

Fatema Mernissi

So much of Islam is Judeo-Christianity. It's impossible to divorce them. Islam is 600 years after Christ. Thousands of years after Judaism. Christ, Moses, Abraham - they are all in the Koran.

Fatema Mernissi

Consumerist ads brainwash us into individualist and egotistic self-love.

Fatema Mernissi

The Taliban is the Muslim version of the Salem witch trials.

Fatema Mernissi

I was amazed to realize that for many Westerners, Scheherezade was considered a lovely but simple-minded entertainer, someone who relates innocuous tales and dresses fabulously. In our part of the world, Scheherezade is perceived as a courageous heroine and is one of our rare female mythological figures.

Fatema Mernissi

Since all power from the seventh century on was only legitimated by religion, political forces and economic interests pushed for the fabrication of false traditions.

Fatema Mernissi

To understand the fanatic rejection of women's liberation in the Muslim world, one has to take into account the time factor. Most of us educated women have illiterate mothers. The conservative wave against women in the Muslim world is a defense mechanism against profound changes in both sex roles and the touchy subject of sexual identity.

Fatema Mernissi

If there is one thing that the women and men of the late 20th century who have an awareness and enjoyment of history can be sure of, it is that Islam was not sent from Heaven to foster egotism and mediocrity.

Fatema Mernissi