Fatema Mernissi quotes - page 2

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:

The Western man declares that in order to be beautiful, a woman must look 14 years old. If she dares to look 50, or worse, 60, she is beyond the pale. By putting the spotlight on the female child and framing her as the ideal of beauty, he condemns the mature woman to invisibility.

Fatema Mernissi

A woman can walk miles without making one single step forward. As a child born in a harem, I instinctively knew that to live is to open closed doors. To live is to look outside. To live is to step out. Life is trespassing.

Fatema Mernissi

No man could have accepted me because I am too rebellious. It would have been catastrophe. I am too into my own thing.

Fatema Mernissi

Growing up, I was taught that a woman should lower her gaze so that men could never know her thoughts. The so-called modesty of Arab women is, in fact, a war tactic.

Fatema Mernissi

You find in the Koran hundreds of verses to support women's rights, and perhaps four or five that do not.

Fatema Mernissi

Someone else is going to read for me or go at my place to the mosque, and/or to tell me you shouldn't take anything from the West because the West is the enemy and so on. It is to me to decide. I am intelligent enough to be critical towards the West and take what I need and reject what is bad for me.

Fatema Mernissi

Sharia law does not exist in the Koran. It was created by man.

Fatema Mernissi

Educated women armed with computers have defeated extremists by denying them a monopoly to define cultural identity and interpret religious texts. No extremist can say that women are inferior to men without being made a laughingstock on Al Jazeera. Islam insisted on equality between everyone.

Fatema Mernissi

The woman with dark hair, wide hips, and a few extra pounds has always been the essence of beauty in Morocco.

Fatema Mernissi

While Muslim men describe themselves as insecure in their harems, real or imagined, Westerners describe themselves as self-assured heroes with no fears of women. The tragic dimension so present in Muslim harems - fear of women and male self-doubt - is missing in the Western harem.

Fatema Mernissi

In Islamic societies, politicians can manipulate almost everything. But thus far, no fundamentalist leader has been able to convince his supporters to renounce Islam's central virtue - the principle of strict equality between human beings, regardless of sex, race, or creed.

Fatema Mernissi

The waves of religion based on terrorism in the 1990s are based on the tormented response of a mutilated Muslim society whose progressive forces have been savagely emasculated. Why on earth is the Arab world so hostile to women? Why can it not see women as a force for development?

Fatema Mernissi

In the 1920s, big names in the Arab world spoke of Scheherazade as an example for intellectuals fighting for their rights. She was a fighter for the right of free expression.

Fatema Mernissi

To me, the Quran is a research book.

Fatema Mernissi

If, by chance, you were to meet me at the Casablanca airport or on a boat sailing from Tangiers, you would think me self-confident, but I am not. Even now, at my age, I am frightened when crossing borders because I am afraid of failing to understand strangers.

Fatema Mernissi