Mernissi’s impact on Islamic feminism: a critique of the religious approach

ABSTRACT

This article shows the different themes but also change of perspectives and approaches that Mernissi dealt with or underwent over the years. It examines the trajectory and impact of her arguments, especially from a critical standpoint. It sheds light on her religious approach and its bearing on Islamic and Moroccan feminisms. The latter approach does not explain the complexity of the link between women’s status and the socio-political context in a Muslim-majority country like Morocco, nor does it provide an answer to women’s problems and aspirations. Using the intersectionality theory, I claim that, to challenge patriarchy and foster gender equality and women’s empowerment, the alternative approach is to think beyond Islam, by arguing that Moroccan women’s roles are shaped by a variety of intersecting factors, namely post-colonial thinking, demographic change, nationalism, poverty, and the progressive shift to a modern society. Adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), first promulgated in 1979 by the UN General Assembly, and often described as an international bill of rights for women, is also part of this alternative human rights approach.

Acknowledgments

I would like to warmly thank Margot Badran (Northwestern University), Raja Rhouni (University Chouaib Doukkali at Eljadida, Fatima Sadiqi (Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah University at Fès)) and two anonymous readers for this journal for their judicious comments and remarks on a previous draft of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Consisting of a preamble and 30 articles, CEDAW defines what represents segregation against women and sets up an agenda for action to combat and end such segregation. CEDAW defines discrimination against women as ‘…any distinction, exclusion or restriction made on the basis of sex which has the effect or purpose of impairing or nullifying the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by women, irrespective of their marital status, on a basis of equality of men and women, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural, civil or any other field,’ http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/cedaw.htm (accessed October 5, 2016).

² See Judith Tucker, Women, Family, and Gender in Islamic Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

³ Moha Ennaji, ‘Secular and Islamic Feminist Movements in Morocco: Contentions, Achievements, and Challenges’, in Moroccan Feminisms: New Perspectives, eds. Moha Ennaji, et al. (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2016), 29–50.

⁴ Cf. Raja Rhouni, Secular and Islamic Feminist Critiques in the Work of Fatima Mernissi (Leiden: Brill, 2010); and Asma Lamrabet, Women in the Quran: An Emancipatory Reading. Translated by Myriam Francois Cerrah (Leicestershire: Kube Publishing Ltd, 2016).

⁵ For more on her early life, see this link: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Fatema-Mernissi (accessed July 15, 2020); and Rhouni (Ibid).

⁶ Cf. Kimberle Crenshaw, ‘Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics’, University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1, no. 8 (1989): 139–167; and also Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (New York: Routledge, 2008).

⁷ Marnia Lazreg, ‘Feminism and Difference: The Perils of Writing as a Woman on Women in Algeria’, Feminist Studies 14, no. 1 (1988): 81–107.

⁸ Raja Rhouni, ‘Decolonizing Feminism: A Look at Fatema Mernissi’s Work and its Legacy’, in Moroccan Feminisms: New Perspectives, eds. Moha Ennaji, Fatima Sadiqi and Karen Vintges (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2016), 129–144.

⁹ Lazreg, Ibid, 95.

¹⁰ I am using the revised edition of Beyond the Veil, published in 1987.

¹¹ Fatima Sadiqi and Moha Ennaji, ‘The Feminization of Public Space: Women’s Activism, the Family Law, and Social Change in Morocco’, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies (JMEWS) 2, no. 2 (2006): 86–114.

¹² Raja Rhouni, ‘Decolonizing Feminism: A Look at Fatema Mernissi’s Work and its Legacy’, in Moroccan Feminisms: New Perspectives, eds. Moha Ennaji, Fatima Sadiqi and Karen Vintges (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2016), 129–144.

¹³ Susan Slyomovics, The Performance of Human Rights in Morocco (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005).

¹⁴ I must say that, to my knowledge, she has never evoked being in Paris during those events. However, the account she has given of her stay in France corresponds to this period.

¹⁵ See Asma Barlas, Believing Women” in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur’an (Austin: Texas University Press, 2002).

¹⁶ See her fantastic book in French Les Sindbads marocains: Voyage dans le Maroc civique (Rabat: Editions Marsam, 2004).

¹⁷ See Margot Badran, Feminism in Islam: Secular and Religious Convergences (New York: OneWorld, 2009); and Margot Badran, Feminists, Islam, and Nation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).

¹⁸ Nahla Abdo, ‘Muslim Family Law: Articulating Gender, Class, and the State’, in Islam and the Everyday World: Public Policy Dilemmas, eds. Sohrab Behdad and Ferhad Nomani (London: Routledge, 2006), 88–112. Cf. also Fauzia Gardezi, ‘Islam, Women and Feminist Movements in Pakistan: 1981–1991’, South Asia Bulletin 10/2 (1990): 18–24.

¹⁹ Fatima Sadiqi, Women, Gender and Language in Morocco (Leiden and Boston, Brill Academic, 2003).

²⁰ Moha Ennaji and Fatima Sadiqi, Gender and Violence in the Middle East (London: Routledge, 2011).

²¹ Islamic feminism is influenced by liberation theology which emerged among Catholic scholars in Latin America in the 1950s and 1960s. It focused on gender equality and socio-economic justice. The Third Way is used here interchangeably with Islamic feminism. See Doris H. Gray and Habiba Boumlik, ‘Morocco’s Islamic Feminism: The Contours of a New Theology?’ in Women and Social Change in North Africa, eds. Doris H. Gray and Nadia Sonneveld (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 119–142.

²² Raja Rhouni, ‘Decolonizing Feminism: A Look at Fatema Mernissi’s Work and its Legacy’, in Moroccan Feminisms: New Perspectives, eds. Moha Ennaji, Fatima Sadiqi and Karen Vintges (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2016), 129–144.

²³ Raja Rhouni (ibid).

²⁴ Ibid.

²⁵ Fatema Mernissi, The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women’s Rights in Islam. Translated by Mary Jo Lakeland (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1991), 85.

²⁶ In her book The Veil and the Male Elite, she acknowledges that Khamlichi was her main source/interlocutor for Islamic scholarship.

²⁷ Ahmed Khamlichi, Re-interpretation: Conception and Practice [Al-ijtihad: Tasawwuran wa mumarasa], vol. 7. (Rabat: Dar Annashr Al-maarif, 2010).

²⁸ Abderrazak Moulay Rchid, La femme et la loi au Maroc (Casablanca Lefennec, 1991).

²⁹ See note 5, 196.

³⁰ Talal Asad, ‘The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam’, Qui Parle 17/2 (Spring/Summer 2009): 1–30.

³¹ Miriam Cooke, Women Claim Islam: Creating Islamic Feminism through Literature (London: Routledge, 2000).

³² Mohammed Hashas, ‘Fatema Mernissi: The Pride of Islamic Feminism in Modern Times’, Reset Doc, November 30, 2015, http://www.resetdoc.org/story/00000022606 (accessed December 21, 2016).

³³ Cf. Anouar Majid, ‘The Politics of Feminism in Islam’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 23, no. 2 (1998): 321–61.

³⁴ See the link to this documentary: http://www.aljazeera.net/programs/almashaa/2014/7/10/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B1%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%B7-%D9%81%D8%A7%D8%B7%D9%85%D8%A9-%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B3%D9%86%D8%AF%D8%A8%D8%A7%D8%AF (accessed December 21, 2015).

³⁵ Asma Lamrabet, Women in the Quran: An Emancipatory Reading. Translated by Myriam Francois Cerrah (Leicestershire: Kube Publishing Ltd, 2016).

³⁶ Mahmoud, Saba. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).

³⁷ Humeira Iqtidar, Secularizing Islamists? (University Press Scholarship Online, 2011).

³⁸ Herzbrun, Sonya, Dayan, ‘L’interprétation des textes religieux, au cœur des combats féministes’, The Conversation, July 16, 2020. https://theconversation.com/linterpretation-des-textes-religieux-au-coeur-des-combats-feministes-129995 (accessed July 17, 2020).

³⁹ One example is Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Mulki Al-Sharmani and Jana Rumminger, eds., Men in Charge?: Rethinking Authority in Muslim Legal Tradition (London: Oneworld Publications, 2015).

⁴⁰ Cf. Moha Ennaji, ‘Women’s Activism in North Africa: A Historical and Socio-Political Approach’, in Double-Edged Politics on Women’s Rights in the MENA Region, H. Darhour. and D. Dahlrup (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 157–204.

⁴¹ Fatima Sadiqi, Amira Noaira, Azza El Kholy and Moha Ennaji, eds., Women Writing Africa. The Northern Region (New York: The Feminist Press, 2009).

⁴² Zahia Smaili Salhi, ‘The Algerian Feminist Movement between Nationalism, Patriarchy, and Islamism’, Women’s Studies International Forum 33, no. 2 (2010): 113–124.

⁴³ Khedija Arfaoui, ‘The Development of the Feminist Movement in Tunisia 1920s-2000s’, International Journal of the Humanities 5, no. 8 (January 2007): 53–60.

⁴⁴ By contrast Leila Ahmed (1993) adopted a purely historical approach in order to re-visit women in Islam. See her book Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate. Reissue ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993).

⁴⁵ Fatema Mernissi, Le Harem politique: le Prophète et les femmes [The Political Harem: The Prophet and Women] (Paris: Albin Michel, 1987), 21.

⁴⁶ See note, 24.

⁴⁷ Samer Traboulsi, ‘The Queen was Actually a Man: Arwa Bint Ahmad and the Politics of Religion,’ Arabica 1 (January 2003): 96–108.

⁴⁸ Engy Abdelkader, ‘Using the Legacy of Muslim Women Leaders to Empower,’ Huffpost, April 28, 2012. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/legacy-muslim-women-leaders-empower_b_1284480 (accessed July 16, 2020).

⁴⁹ Abdelkader (ibid).

⁵⁰ In the last six decades, we have had other Muslim women as heads of state and government, such as Bangladeshi Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia who served from 1991 to 1996 and 2001 to 2006, former Turkish Prime Minister Tansu Ciller who served from 1993 to 1995, and former Iranian Vice President Masoumeh Ebtekar who served 1997 to 2005. In addition to Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri who was elected in 2001, former Senegalese Prime Minister Mame Madior Boye was appointed in 2001, Malian President Cissé Mariam Kaïdama Sidibé was elected in 2011, Kosovan President Atifete Jahjaga served in 2011 to 2016, and current President of Mauritius Bibi Ameenah Firdaus Gurib-Fakim was elected in 2015. Cf. Debbie Almontaser, ‘The Time Muslim Countries Had Female Presidents And The US Did Not,’ The Huffingtonpost, March 22, 2017. See this link: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-time-muslim-countries-had-female-presidents-and_us_58d008a5e4b0e0d348b345f9 (accessed August 10, 2018).

⁵¹ Wahhabism is an 18th century Islamic doctrine and religious Salafi movement founded by Saudi Muslim scholar Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703–1791). It has been variously described as an ultraconservative and austere sect of Sunni Islam. In 1744, Muhammad bin Saud, the founder of the current royal dynasty, made a pact with theologian Muhammad bin Abd al-Wahhab, in which the latter provided the crucial religious underpinning for the former’s project to unify and centralize the warring tribes of Arabia, bringing them under his control. See Samiah Baroni, ‘Saudi Arabia and Expansionist Wahhabism’ (PhD. Diss., University of Central Florida, 2006). https://stars.library.ucf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1807&context=etd (accessed July 18, 2020).

⁵² See note 46, 23.

⁵³ Ibid., 24.

⁵⁴ However, since the Arab uprisings in 2011, Islamists in Morocco have shifted gears because they want ‘their’ women or ‘religious conservative women’ to be out in the public domain to fight Islamist battles. See Ennaji, Moha. Secular and Islamic Feminist Movements in Morocco: Contentions, Achievements, and Challenges. In Moha Ennaji, et al., eds., Moroccan Feminisms: New Perspectives (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2016), 29–50. This is also the case in Egypt, where al-Da’wa Salafi movement, which later became a political party (Al-Nur party), recruited many women in order to attract voters.Cf. Lauren Deschamps-Laporte, ‘Egyptian Salafi Women’, in Women and Social Change in North Africa, eds. Gray & Sonneveld (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 143–157.

⁵⁵ The Veil and the Male Elite, 97.

⁵⁶ Similarly, Hoodfar (1993) takes an ethnographic and anthropological stand in her case study of Muslim Iranian and Egyptian women and their different forms of resistance. She underscores the general trend among veiled women who did not consider themselves victims. She describes Islamic feminists as agents of change, i.e., as women who are pro-active, educated, and ‘capable of resistance and self-empowerment’. Cf. Homa Hoodfar, ‘The Veil in their Minds and On Our Heads: The Persistence of Colonial Images of Muslim Women’, Resources for Feminist Research 22, no. 314 (Fall, Winter 1993): 5–18.

⁵⁷ Fatema Mernissi, The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women’s Rights in Islam. Translated by Mary Jo Lakeland (New York: Addison-Wesley, 1991), 85.

⁵⁸ According to bell hooks, ‘patriarchy is a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females […].’ http://imaginenoborders.org/pdf/zines/UnderstandingPatriarchy.pdf (accessed September 21, 2016). Bell Hooks, The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (Washington, DC: Atria Books, 2004).

⁵⁹ Abu Bakr, ‘Omaima. Islamic Feminism: What is in a Name?’ Middle East Women’s Studies Review (Winter/Spring 2001); Asma Barlas, Believing Women” in Islam: Unreading Patriarchal Interpretations of the Qur’an (Austin. Texas UniversityPress, 2002); and Amina Wadud, Inside The Gender Jihad: Women’s Reform in Islam (New York: Oneworld Publications, 2006).

⁶⁰ Interview conducted on 21 September 2019 within the framework of a wider project on the feminist movement in North Africa.

⁶¹ Margot Badran, ‘Two Heads are Better than One’, Al Ahram Weekly, March 7–13, 2002. See also AÖ Keysan, Activism and Women’s NGOs in Turkey: Civil Society, Feminism and Politics (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019).

⁶² Jane D. Tchaïcha, and Khedija Arfaoui, The Tunisian Women’s Rights Movement: From Nascent Activism to Influential Power-broking (London: Routledge, 2017).

⁶³ Zehra Kabasakal Arat. ‘Economic Rights and Justice in the Qur’an’, Human Rights Quarterly 42, no. 1 (February 2020): 85–118.

⁶⁴ For example, Islam came to the Arab Peninsula in the 7th century to abolish jahiliya (wild uncivilized society), when men could marry any number of women, and fathers could bury their female babies alive at birth (wa’d al-banat), and married off their daughters at a very early age (child marriage) without the consent of their daughters and without a marriage contract; wives became the properties of their husbands, and women were entirely excluded from inheritance for fear of empowering them and their original tribes. Cf. John Esposito Islam: The Straight Path. 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). This kind of tradition and culture had to be changed by Islam, which banned wa’d al-banat (female infanticide) and barred men from marrying an unlimited number of women, and included women in the inheritance law. Thus, to explain Muslim gender roles and relations in Islam, one must resort to the historical and social context, not to ideological readings only. This is what Mernissi and others have done to disentangle what is customary and human from what is divine and immutable. The rule of the Prophet Muhammad and of the subsequent caliphs of early Islam, especially Abu-Bakr, Umar and Uthman, was characterized by state-building, as it was a period of transition. Later, Islam expanded east and west despite internal and external conflicts and challenges. Cf. Sohrab Behdad ‘Islam, Revivalism, and Public Policy’, in Islam and the Everyday World: Public Policy, eds. Sohrab Behdad and Ferhad Nomani (Dilemmas. London: Routledge 2006), 1–37.

⁶⁵ For example, Tariq Ramadan idealizes Islam as a religion and indirectly calls upon the reader to seek refuge in the glorious past instead of inciting Muslims to reinterpret the Texts and confront the serious realities in their societies by addressing the real issues such as gender inequality, oppression, corruption, and the deficit in democracy and human rights in Muslim-majority countries. Islam is equally often wrongly used interchangeably with culture, thus overlooking the variation and cultural differences between Moroccan, Malaysian, Turkish, Saudi cultures, for example. Cf. Tariq Ramadan, Introduction to Islam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017).

⁶⁶ The German political scientist of Egyptian origin, Hamed Abdel Samad (2016) had predicted the collapse of political Islam under the weight of an Islam unable to turn to modernity, and insisting that it is in the West’s interest to support the secular and democratic forces in the Muslim world, and Muslims must encourage a critical approach and a reformation of Islam instead of repressing their societies with hate and sexist discourses. Cf. Hamed Abdel-Samad, Islamic Fascism. English ed. (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2016).

⁶⁷ Cf. Moha Ennaji, ‘Women and Political Participation in Morocco and North African States’, in Gender and Political Power, eds. Mino Vianello and Mary Hawkswàrth (London: Palgrave, 2015), 35–52.

⁶⁸ Moha Ennaji and Fatima Sadiqi, ‘Women’s Activism and the New Family Code Reforms in Morocco’, The IUP Journal of History and Culture VI (2012): 1, 1–19.

⁶⁹ Being an Islamic revivalist movement, often characterized by moral conservatism, pedantry, and the attempt to implement Islamic values in all walks of life, political Islam started with the creation of the Muslim Brothers Movement in Egypt by Hassan Albanna in 1928. Hassan Al-Banna was assassinated on 12 February 1949 during King Farouk’s regime because of his extremist ideas and use of violence to take power. Since then political Islam has been developing into sects and sub-sects, some very violent with a military branch like Taliban or Al-Qaeda, others less violent or peaceful like the Turkish model. Cf. Mehdi Mozaffari, Islamism: A New Totalitarianism (Boulder, Co: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2017).

⁷⁰ The Islamic debate rose during the late 1990s as a consequence of the end of the cold war and the emergence of a single super power: The United States of America.

⁷¹ Political Islam, as an ideological movement that seeks to create social change in Muslim-majority societies on the basis of Islamic values and beliefs, has suffered a serious blow in Egypt and, as a consequence, in the region after the Islamists lost power in 2013.

⁷² Fatima Sadiqi, ‘An Assessment of Today’s Moroccan Feminist Movements (1946–2014),’ in Moroccan Feminisms: New Perspectives, eds. Moha Ennaji et al. (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2016), 39–52.

⁷³ Moha Ennaji, ‘Secular and Islamic Feminist Movements in Morocco: Contentions, Achievements, and Challenges,’ in Moroccan Feminisms: New Perspectives, eds. Moha Ennaji et al. (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2016), 29–50.

⁷⁴ Cf. Valentine Moghadam, ‘Democracy and Women’s Rights: Reflections on the Middle East and North Africa,’ in Feminisms, Democratization and Radical Democracy, eds. G. Di Marco and C. Tabbush (Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de San Martin Press, 2012), 46–60.

⁷⁵ United Nations (UN) Development Program, ‘Sustainable development goals’, 2015. http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/sustainable-development-goals.html (accessed August 2, 2020).

⁷⁶ Cf. M. Siraj Sait, ‘The Climate Justice, Land Right And Gender. Equality Conundrum,’ Land 9, no. 8 (2020): 261. file:///C:/Users/ennaji/AppData/Local/Temp/land-882503-0-reformat.pdf (accessed August 3, 2020).

⁷⁷ See the intersectionality theory as developed by Crenshaw (1989) and Collins (2008), cited in note 7 above.

⁷⁸ Cf. Bonnie Mann, Women’s Liberation and The Sublime: Feminism, Postmodernism, Environment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

⁷⁹ Cf. Doris H. Gray and Habiba Boumlik, ‘Morocco’s Islamic Feminism: The Contours of a New Theology?’ in Women and Social Change in North Africa, eds. Doris H. Gray and Nadia Sonneveld (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 119–142.

⁸⁰ Amel Grami, ‘Islamic Feminism: A New Feminist Movement or a Strategy by Women for Acquiring Rights?’ Contemporary Arab Affairs, 6, no. 1 (2013): 102–113.

⁸¹ Cf. Ibtissam Bouachrine, Women and Islam: Myths, Apologies, and the Limits of the Feminist Critique (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2015).

⁸² Khedija Arfaoui, ‘Women on the Move for Gender Equality in the Maghreb’, in Feminisms, Democratization and Radical Democracy, eds. G. Di Marco and C. Tabbush (Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de San Martin Press, 2012), 101–138.