Fatema Mernissi

Fatema Mernissi (1940-2015) was a Moroccan sociologist and a leading voice in Islamic feminist scholarship, known for combining empirical sociological fieldwork with historical and textual reinterpretation to examine gender, sexuality and power in Muslim societies. Her Beyond the Veil (1975) analyzed the social organization of gender in Morocco, while The Veil and the Male Elite (1987) argued that many restrictive readings of Islamic scripture regarding women reflected the political interests of later interpreters rather than the Prophet's own teaching, contending that religious texts have long been manipulated as part of the structural practice of power in Muslim societies. Her later memoir Dreams of Trespass (1994) and Scheherazade Goes West (2001) extended her analysis into autobiography and comparative cultural criticism.