Fatema Mernissi
Moroccan writer
Fatema Mernissi was born in
Fez in 1940. She studied political science at the
Sorbonne and
Brandeis University, where she earned her doctorate. Mernissi is a leading authority in the
Arab world on
Koranic studies.
Her first book, The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Islam, is a historical study of role of the wives of Mahomet.
For Doing Daily Battle: Interviews with Moroccan Women (1991), she interviewed peasant women, women labourers, clairvoyants and maidservants.
In 1995, Mernissi published an autobiography, Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood.
Other works of Mernissi include
- Islam and Democracy: Fear of the Modern World (1992)
- Forgotten Queens of Islam
- Scheherazade is not a Moroccan
- Islam, Gender and Social Change
Mernissi is currently a lecturer at the Mohamed V University of
Rabat, and a research scholar at the University Institute for Scientific Research, in the same city.
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