Fatema Mernissi Quotes & Sayings

It remains to be asked why today it is the image of the woman of the "Golden Age" [the Abbasid dynasty] - a "slave" who intrigues in the corridors of power when she loses hope of seducing - who symbolizes the Muslim eternal female, while the memory of Umm Salama, A'isha, and Sukayna awakens no response and seems strangely distant and unreal.
The answer without doubt is to be found in the time-mirror wherein the Muslim looks at himself to foresee his future. The image of "his" woman will change when he feels the pressing need to root his future in a liberating memory. Perhaps the woman should help him do this through daily pressure for equality, thereby bringing him into a fabulous present. And the present is always fabulous, because there everything is possible - even the end of always looking to the past and the beginning of confidence, of enjoying in harmony the moment that we have. — Fatema Mernissi

Islam was, at least during its first centuries, the religion of reasoning, responsible individuals capable of telling what was true from what was false as long as they were well equipped to do so, as long as they possessed the tools of knowledge - specifically, the collections of Hadith. The fact that, over the course of centuries, we have seen believers who criticize and judge replaced by muzzled, censored, obedient, and grateful Muslims in no way detracts from this fundamental dimension of Islam. — Fatema Mernissi

By putting the spotlight on the female child and framing her as the ideal of beauty, he condemns the mature woman to invisibility. In fact, the modern Western man enforces Immanuel Kant's nineteenth-century theories: To be beautiful, women have to appear childish and brainless. When a woman looks mature and self-assertive, or allows her hips to expand, she is condemned ugly. Thus, the walls of the European harem separate youthful beauty from ugly maturity. — 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

Pessimism is the luxury of the powerful. — Fatema Mernissi

Beauty is in the skin! Take care of it, oil it, clean it, scrub it, perfume it, and put on your best clothes, even if there is no special occasion, and you'll feel like a queen. If society is hard on you, fight back by pampering your skin. Skin is political. Otherwise why would the imams order us to hide it? — Fatema Mernissi

Beauty is within; you just have to bring it out. — 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

A woman could be totally powerless, and still give meaning to her life by dreaming about flight. — 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

Happiness, she would explain, was when a person felt good, light, creative, content, loving and loved, and free. An unhappy person felt as if there were barriers crushing her desires and the talents she had inside. A happy woman was one who could exercise all kinds of rights, from the right to move to the right to create, compete, and challenge, and at the same time could be loved for doing so. Part of happiness was to be loved by a man who enjoyed your strength and was proud of your talents. Happiness was also about the right to privacy, the right to retreat from the company of others and plunge into contemplative solitude. Or sit by yourself doing nothing for a whole day, and not give excuses or feel guilty about it either. Happiness was to be with loved ones, and yet still feel that you existed as a separate being, that ou were not just there to make them happy. Happiness was when there was a balance between what you gave and what you took. — Fatema Mernissi

But Aunt Habiba said not to worry, that everyone had wonderful things hidden inside. The only difference was that some managed to share those wonderful things, and others did not. Those who did not explore and share the precious gifts within went through life feeling miserable, sad, awkward with others, and angry too. You had to develop a talent, Aunt Habiba said, so that you could give something, share and shine. And you developed a talent by working very hard at becoming good at something. It could be anything - singing, dancing, cooking, embroidering, listening, looking, smiling, waiting, accepting, dreaming, rebelling, leaping. 'Anything you can do well can change your life', said Aunt Habiba. — Fatema Mernissi

It is our tradition to question everything and everybody, especially the fuqaha and imams. And it is more than ever necessary for us to disinter our true tradition from the centuries of oblivion that have managed to obscure it. But we must also guard against falling into generalizations and saying that all the imams were and are misogynistic. That is not true today and was not true yesterday. — Fatema Mernissi

I knew that if you moved around, your mind worked faster, because you were constantly seeing new things that you had to respond to. — Fatema Mernissi

When a woman thinks she is nothing, the little sparrows cry.
Who can defend them on the terrace , if no one has the vision of a world without slingshots? — Fatema Mernissi

The Islam of Muhammad banished the idea of supervision, of a police system of control. This explains the absence of clergy in Islam and the encouraging of all Muslims to get involved in understanding the written word. Individual responsibility came into play to balance the weight of aristocratic control, finally making it ineffective in an umma of believers whose behavior followed precise, internalized rules. Recognizing in women an inalienable will fitted into this scheme of making everyone individually responsible. — Fatema Mernissi

What a strange fate for Muslim memory, to be called upon in order to censure and punish! What a strange memory, where even dead men and women do not escape attempts at assassination, if by chance they threaten to raise the hijab that covers the mediocrity and servility that is presented to us as tradition. How did the tradition succeed in transforming the Muslim woman into that submissive, marginal creature who buries herself and only goes out into the world timidly and huddled in her veils? Why does the Muslim man need such a mutilated companion? — 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

She would take him to faraway lands to observe foreign ways, so he could get closer to the strangeness within himself. — Fatema Mernissi

-On sharing the love story of the Persian prince Khushraw and the niece of the queen of Armenia Shirin (who were looking for each other but in opposite directions): Both lovers then departed, looking for each other in opposite directions, a theme universal in its pathos, because we all spend our brief lives doing just that, even if we physically share our beds with the same person every night for years. Always we carry an image in our head of a better person, of an ideal person, which blurs our chances of finding happiness. — Fatema Mernissi

Once I asked Mina why she danced so smoothly while most of the other women made abrupt, jerky movements, and she said that many of the women confused liberation with agitation. 'Some ladies are angry with their lives,' she said 'and so even their dance becomes an expression of that.' Angry women are hostages of their anger. They cannot escape it and set themselves free, which is indeed a sad fate. The worst of prisons is a self-created one. (p.162) — 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

A human being was connected to the world through his or her skin and how could someone with clogged pores feel the environment or be sensitive to its vibrations? — Fatema Mernissi

When you are in trouble, you need to put all your energies into thinking that there is a way out. Then, the bottom, the dark hole, becomes just a springboard from which you can leap so high that your head might hit a cloud. — Fatema Mernissi

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

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

Dignity is to have a dream, a strong one, which gives you a vision, a world where you have a place, where whatever it is you have to contribute makes a difference. — Fatema Mernissi

There are two prerequisites to growing wings: the first is to feel encircled and the second is to believe that you can break the circle. — Fatema Mernissi

To be happy a woman had to think hard, during long silent hours, about how to make each small step forward. — Fatema Mernissi

There are many ways to be beautiful. Fighting, swearing, and ignoring tradition could make a women irresistible. — 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

Mothers should tell little girls and boys about the importance of dreams,' Aunt Habiba said. 'They give a sense direction. It is not enough to reject this courtyard
you need to have a vision of the meadows with which you want to replace it.' But how, I asked Aunt Habiba, could you distinguish among all the wishes, all the cravings which besieged you, and find the one on which you ought to focus, the important dream that gave you vision? She said that little children had to be patient, the key dream would emerge and bloom within, and then, from the intense pleasure it gave you, you would know that that it was the genuine little treasure which would give you direction and light. (p. 214) — 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

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. — Fatema Mernissi

To be alive is to move around, to search for better places, to scavenge the planet looking for more hospitable islands. — Fatema Mernissi

But when your situation is hopeless, all you can do is turn the world upside down, transform it according to your wishes, and create anew. — Fatema Mernissi