Fatima Mernissi's legacy

Last November marked the anniversary of the death of the most famous Moroccan intellectual and feminist of recent decades and a leading figure in the struggle for women's rights throughout the Arab world. Fatima Mernissi (Fez, 1940- Rabat, 2015), winner of the 2003 Prince of Asturias Award for Literature and the 2004 Erasmus Award, and considered one of the 100 most influential women in the Arab world according to the ranking published by the international magazine Arabian business of Dubai, has left us an extensive body of work ranging from sociological analysis based on field studies to autobiographical accounts and the exegesis of the Koran from a feminist perspective. In this sense, a large part of her work focused on analysing the role of women in religious texts in order to confront the defenders of the Qur'an. status quo The author's work is a clear example of this, and she has been a leading authority on Qur'anic studies. Mernissi became an authority on Qur'anic studies, publishing such landmark works as Sex, ideology and Islam (1975) o The political harem: the prophet and women (1987).

After graduating in political science in Morocco, she continued her studies at the Sorbonne and completed a doctorate in sociology at Brandeis University (Massachusetts, USA). After returning to her country, she taught at the Muhammad V University in Rabat and worked as a researcher at the Centre Universitaire de la Recherche Scientifique in the Moroccan capital. She also directed a writing workshop in Rabat. In addition to her work in the academic sphere, she stood out for her relentless defence of women's rights, becoming one of the best-known Moroccan intellectuals in the world, which led her to become an advisor to international organisations such as UNESCO and the ILO.

Mernissi did not consider herself a militant in the traditional sense. "I don't take to the streets to make demands (...) My peaceful weapon is communication", as the author herself said. The Fundación Tres Culturas wanted to pay tribute to this integral intellectual and her way of understanding the struggle through knowledge and words by renaming our specialised library, which has been renamed the Fátima Mernissi Library. In this context, through the space 'Reflections' we also want to contribute to making known the legacy of a thinker who managed to communicate through an extensive work that has also been translated into many languages.

Fatema Mernissi, Dreams on the threshold (Ediciones B, 2013)

Described by the author herself as "a false autobiography", Fatima Mernissi's only narrative work, published in 1996, recounts the childhood and early adolescence of a girl in a harem in the city of Fez. It is not, however, the harem typified by the romantics whose flashes of exoticism and sensuality have left their mark on the Western imagination to this day. In this sense, a brief introduction to the term in its broader meaning, including its etymology, is lacking, precisely to avoid confusion due to the widespread Romantic vision of the word in popular representation. The word harem comes from the Arabic haram (restricted, forbidden, sacred, private) which, "in social terms, refers to private accommodation in a family dwelling reserved for women, children and male relatives of the family" (Encyclopedia of Islamic Civilisation and ReligionIan Richard Netton, Routledge, 2008).

We are thus offered a first-person account of life in the harem, the family residence in which several generations live together and whose most striking feature is the practical confinement of the women inside. The story is told in the first person through the eyes of a young girl who does not understand the existence of this boundary between men and women, between inside and outside, and who is amazed at the virtual psychological barriers that have eventually derived from the physical ones. This confinement becomes even more painful when compared to the relative autonomy of women who live in the countryside and can go out freely, ride horses or swim in the river.

In the context of the colonial era in Morocco, marked by nationalist fervour but also by the conflict between tradition and modernity, the protagonist of the play narrates in detail the lives of several generations of women who are forced to live together under the same roof. Mothers, daughters, grandmothers, divorced aunts, teenage cousins and pre-pubescent male cousins share secrets, readings, plays and weekly visits to the public baths, but also quarrels and fierce debates about the current political situation and changes in society. A society that is seeing its customs change, as shown by the fact that the protagonist herself was enrolled in one of the first mixed schools opened by the ulemas in the framework of the Moroccan nationalist movement.

Fatima Mernissi, Aixa and the king's son or who can do more, the man or the woman? (ediciones del oriente y del mediterráneo, 1990)

Fatima Mernissi's intention in collecting this tale from the Moroccan folk tradition is twofold: to prove "that the female contestation of male supremacy exists in our culture" and to demonstrate that the Moroccan who claims that this contestation is imported "is either ignorant of his past and his culture; or he knows this culture and knowingly distorts it, which is known as manipulation".

The story, narrated to the sociologist by Lalla Laaziza Tazi, reflects a common premise to that underlying The Thousand and One NightsThe story of a woman who, thanks to her intelligence and cunning, manages to triumph over the domination and violence of a man.

In the form of a fierce and, at times, amusing war of the sexes, the tale tells the story of love and hate between Aixa, the carpenter's daughter, and the king's son. It all begins with a challenge in the form of an ingenious riddle in which the king's son asks Aixa for the number of basil leaves she was tending, to which she responds with another challenge: since the prince has studied the Koran, could he tell her how many stars there are in the sky, fish in the water and dots in the holy book? The prince's offence gives rise to a series of new challenges in what is essentially the story of a revenge that concludes with a happy ending, as a result of the perseverance and mental agility of the carpenter's daughter.

As Mernissi points out in the prologue, "female protest does not come from Paris" and perhaps proof of this is the existence of a similar fable under the title 'La mata de albahaca' (The Basil Bush) in the magnificent collection of Spanish folk tales compiled by Antonio Rodríguez Almodóvar in their Stories by the firepublished in two volumes by Ediciones Generales Anaya in the 1980s.

Other works by the author in the Fatima Mernissi Library of the Fundación Tres Culturas

In this section we briefly review some of the author's works that readers can find in our library.

The forgotten sultanas (Muchnik Editores SA, 1997)

The election of Benazir Bhuto as prime minister of Pakistan in 1988 was contested by some religious extremists as contrary to Islamic law. This circumstance serves as a starting point for the author to carry out a thorough investigation into the ostentation of the caliphate in the Muslim world and, more generally, the exercise of power. Through the study of historical sources such as the Muqaddima of Ibn Khaldun or the Rihla Mernissi offers a fascinating portrait of some of the women who came to occupy positions of responsibility in the Arab-Muslim world, from Andalusian Granada to Cairo, Delhi and North Africa.

Morocco through its women (ediciones del oriente y del mediterráneo, 2000)

In this work, Mernissi attempts to present an image of Morocco through the discourse of its women, their problems and their struggles. The author carries out detailed fieldwork through interviews with women from different social and economic backgrounds with a twofold objective: to contrast the differences between male and female perceptions of the world and to identify the dimensions of women's lives and the consequences of the profound and irreversible changes that have occurred in recent decades.

Reflections on youth violence (Icaria editorial, 2016)

In this work, edited by Fatima Mernissi, which will become her last publication, the author compiles a series of articles written by psychiatrists, sociologists, journalists and civic agents on the phenomenon known in Morocco as 'charmil', an "individual and collective behaviour that essentially occurs in large urban centres, affects adolescents and young adults and manifests itself in numerous facets", according to Jallal Toufiq, psychologist and contributor to the work. For Mernissi herself, who contributes an article entitled "How to adjust the advertising of the 642 pan-Arab television stations (Free to air) to karama (dignity) after the revolution", the aim of this book is to explain, among other things, "the return of the religious due among other things to the failure of Western consumer capitalism where only the 1% of the rich (...) have the right to the KaremaThe dignity that the youth of the Arab Spring chanted in the streets of Cairo and Tunis. A deficit of Karema which reflects the current manipulation of young people by lobbies that profit from fabricating so-called 'Islamic terrorism'".

All the material recommended in this section is available on the website of the Fundación Tres Culturas (www.tresculturas.org) or in our Specialised Library, which also offers the possibility of collective loans of some of the works mentioned above (for more information: http://www.tresculturas.org/club/PAUTAS.pdf). The opening hours are Monday to Friday from 9:30 am to 2:00 pm and Wednesdays from 4:00 pm to 6:30 pm.