Fatema Mernissi Quotes

"If women's rights are a problem for some modern Muslim men, it is neither because of the Quran nor the Prophet, nor the Islamic tradition, but simply because those rights conflict with the interests of a male elite."

"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."

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

"Since all power from the seventh century on was only legitimated by religion, political forces and economic interests pushed for the fabrication of false traditions."

"The Taliban is the Muslim version of the Salem witch trials."

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

"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."

"If there is one thing that the women and men of the late 20th century who have an awareness and enjoyment of history can be sure of, it is that Islam was not sent from Heaven to foster egotism and mediocrity."

"Now that Arab women are pouring into the streets by the million, men discover with dismay that they, not women, were the captives of the harem dream."

"Women are builders of civil society. We are the ones who are going to build it. You know why? We have no choice. Either you shut up, and you are humiliated, or you do what I'm doing. You scream."

"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. I mean, when I write something in the press, the day after in the fish market, people will be discussing it."

"There has been a terrible hemorrhage of educated women to the West where they can flourish. I understand, but it is terrible. We must stay home."

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

"So much of Islam is Judeo-Christianity. It's impossible to divorce them. Islam is 600 years after Christ. Thousands of years after Judaism. Christ, Moses, Abraham - they are all in the Koran."

"There, they tell me to wear the veil. Here, they are telling me to put my hips in a little girl's skirt, and I am this lovely full woman. You've got this Ph.D. and you're worrying, 'Am I skinny enough?'"

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

"I go to the hamam and put henna on my skin and hair. Even when I go to New York, I let the shower run hot to create a steam hamam at my hotel. But when I finish with the bath, I put on expensive French creams."

"In Morocco, for a woman to earn her own living is the essential concern."

"The modern Muslim state has never presented itself as secular. Muslim nationalist forces, trapped by a militant and colonialist West unable to share or export its humanism, were driven to build up a rampart, to entrench themselves within the past."

"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."

"Contrary to what many Westerners believe, Islam has a rich tradition of secular painting in spite of its ban on images. It is only in religious rituals that the use of pictorial representation is totally prohibited."

"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."

"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."

"To me, the Quran is a research book."

"Consumerist ads brainwash us into individualist and egotistic self-love."

"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."