Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in a Modern Muslim Society

Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in a Modern Muslim Society
by Fatima Mernissi

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Book Summary Information

Author: Fatima Mernissi
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1987-04
ISBN: 0253204232
Number of pages: 224
Publisher: Indiana University Press

Book Reviews of Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in a Modern Muslim Society

Book Review: Questionable sources and faulty premise
Summary: 1 Stars

After reading this book, I have to admit that Mernissi has the ability to convey her message clearly and intellectually. However, I'm most impressed by how she uses secondary and tertiary sources to make some of her strongest points to support her thesis (that female sexuality is suppressed in Islam), even using suspicous translations of the Qur'an and sayings of Prophet Muhammad (weak, at best). This is a talent shared also by Fox News, and writers like her are not unpopular among feminists and those who distrust Islam or know little about it.
As a Muslim woman raised in the West, my experiences are obviously much different than Mernissi's (I, too, have a problem with the Morocccan establishment's interpretation of Islam, but I don't follow Morocco's version of Islam. I use primary sources). She admits that her grandmother was captured and basically used as a concubine, resulting in the birth of Mernissi's mother. Tragic, and I uphold Mernissi's attitude towards such an injustice. However, her anecdotal experience is also used as her "research." To automate such practices to Islam's true teachings is unscholarly and lacks credibility.
Also, to use a (faulty) argument that Islam's purpose is to oppress women (and in particular, their sexuality) is to ignore the fact that a man's sexuality is also oppressed. That is part and parcel of a religion that upholds chastity of both partners, not to suppress them, but to uphold dignity, self-worth/esteem, and uphold the rights of children (to know their paternity), which she largely ignores. Polygamy, although allowed in certain situations in Islam, is not practiced widely in the Muslim world. Upholding concubines is even more questionable in Islam, yet she uses weak/faulty premises like this throughout the entire book.
The most important element that Mernissi ignores is that any true religion is sent to uphold the rights of all individuals, not just the nobility/upper class (who she forgets to mention are the women who practiced unlimited sexual rights in pre-Islamic Arabia, not the average woman, who was considered little more than property and was bought and sold until Islam forbade it). Every woman under Islam is given the right to choose who they marry, to marry at all, to divorce, to own and inherit property, to vote/freedom of expression, to work and to lead, both inside and outside the home, and yes, to be sexually fulfilled. All within the boundaries which every religion has. Where are the males who resent her implication that an "ideal" society would afford women to choose their partners at will and deny the right to paternity if she becomes pregnant? Where is the justice in that argument?
A true religion has a higher purpose than sexual fulfillment/immediate gratification by any means necessary. Yet she doesn't mention these agreed upon principles that uphold the rights of all humankind, and instead, uses weak evidence to support a faulty thesis.
Again, I'm impressed by her ability to do this, at the very least.

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Nonfiction > Social Sciences > Sociology
Women's Studies > General
Religion & Spirituality > Islam > General

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