Beyond the Veil

Does Islam as a religion oppress women? Is Islam against democracy? In this classic study, internationally renowned sociologist Fatema Mernissi argues that women’s oppression is not due to Islam as this religion in fact celebrates women’s power. Women’s oppression, she maintains, is due to the political manipulation of religion by powerseeking, archaic Muslim male elites. Mernissi explains in her book that early Muslim scholars portrayed women as aggressive hunters who forced men, reduced to weak hunted victims, to control women by imposing requirements such as veiling, which confined women to the private space. In her new introduction, she argues that women’s invasion of the 500-plus Arab satellite channels in the twenty-first century, as show anchors and film and video stars, supports her theory that Islam as a religion celebrates female power. 'A fascinating book’ Scotland on Sunday 'If a reader were to select only one book in order to gain insight into women’s status and prospects in Islamic society, this study should be the one chosen for its clarity, honesty, depth of knowledge and thought-provoking qualities.’ Arab Book World

Auteur
Fatema Mernissi is a leading advocate for women's rights in the Muslim world. She has served as a visiting professor at Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley. Her works have been translated into thirty languages and include Islam and Democracy: Fear of the Modern World (Basic Books) and The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women's Rights in Islam (Perseus Books). In 2003, she was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for Literature along with Susan Sontag.

Contenu
Contents: New Introduction: Why Does the Veil Scare Europe? 7 Introduction: Roots of the Modern Situation 19 Part One The Traditional Muslim View of Women and Their Place in the Social Order 35 1. The Muslim Concept of Active Female Sexuality 37 2. Regulation of Female Sexuality in the Muslim Social Order 57 3. Sex and Marriage Before Islam 77 Part Two Anomic Effects of Modernization on Male - Female Dynamics 99 4. The Modern Situation: Moroccan Data 101 5. Sexual Anomie As Revealed by the Data 110 6. Husband and Wife 122 7. The Mother-in-Law 135 8. The Meaning of Spatial Boundaries 151 9. The Economic Basis of Sexual Anomie in Morocco 162 Conclusion: Women's Liberation in Muslim Countries 181 Notes 195 Index 215