The Forgotten Queens of Islam

2203 Words9 Pages
Redouane AMEZOIROU Communication in Contexts MA Program School of Arts and Humanities, Meknes Course: French and Communications Studies Book Review The Forgotten Queens of Islam. By Fatima Mernissi. Translated by Mary Jo Lakeland. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993- PP- 238 In Morocco, Fatima Mernissi has set up herself as a Moroccan Arab Muslim authority in the field of gender studies and feminism. She has been a feminist prolific writer for several years. She has also been read all over Morocco and the whole world in almost all university departments of gender studies and feminism. She has been devoting her time and energy to the development of the status of women mainly in the Arab world. Not only this but also her important role as a feminist activist adding a lot to the international arena where there is a hot debate about the same issues. Her works are diverse; varying from those relating to economics, politics, socioeconomics and Islam. Her book which first appeared in France as Sultanes Oubliées in 1990 was translated into English by Marry Jo Lakeland in 1993 under the title The Forgotten Queens of Islam. The book is one of Mernissi’s works dealing with the role of women many decades ago. It establishes a historical foundation for women’s political independence and their legitimacy as rulers in the Muslim world. In her introduction of the book, she starts by asking a question to raise her problematic issue around which the whole book turns. She is asking if the politician Benazir Bhutto was the first woman to be elected and involved in politics and change in Pakistan. Of course the answer is no but the case of Benazir Bhutto has been a problem since it occurs in an Islamic state where patriarchy is at the core. Mernissi argues that ‘political decision-making among our ancestors, they said, was always a men’s affair’ (1993, 1). It
Open Document