Fatima Mernissi

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Fatima Mernissi at the award ceremony for the ( Erasmus Prize 2004)

Fatima Mernissi ( Arabic فاطمة مرنيسي, DMG Fāṭima Marnīsī , also Fatema Mernissi ; * 1940 in Fez ; † November 30, 2015 in Rabat ) was a Moroccan sociologist and feminist author.

Life

Mernissi grew up in a middle-class family in Fès and studied political science and sociology at the Sorbonne in Paris , after which she did her doctorate at Brandeis University , USA. Since the 1980s she has taught sociology at the Mohammed V University in Rabat. In order to be able to express himself freely, Mernissi wrote mainly in French and English and also no longer wanted to publish in Morocco.

In 2003 Mernissi was awarded the prestigious Prince of Asturias Prize together with Susan Sontag and in 2004 she was honored with the Erasmus Prize of the Dutch Praemium Erasmianum Foundation.

The Egyptian Nobel Prize for Literature, Nagib Mahfuz, described her as "the most influential intellectual in the Arab world". - As she published in English or French, her works have been translated into numerous languages, including Arabic, and have had a lasting influence on the Arab discussion of feminism and Western ideas about Islamic societies. - In 2017, the Middle East Studies Association donated a " Fatima Mernissi Book Award " to honor outstanding studies on gender, sexuality or the worlds of Muslim women.

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Gender, ideology, Islam

Mernissi was the author of numerous books; her field of work was the role of women in Islam . In her sociological work Gender, Ideology, Islam , she describes the influence of Islam on the position of women in the Arab world: Compared to how sexuality is dealt with in the West (which she describes using Sigmund Freud as an example), Islam takes a completely different path taken: "He does not fight sexuality, but the woman." (p. 29) The core of the gender relationship in Islam is the "fear of the self-determination of women" (p. 43). The message of Islam is based on the assumption that “humanity consists only of men”, which can be seen, among other things, from its sexual regulations (p. 31).

The political harem

In her work The Political Harem - Mohammed and Women , Mernissi examined relevant passages from the Koran and hadith that deal with the position of women in early Islam at the time of Mohammed. Their result: There are clear indications that Muhammad's women participated in public life and stood up for their rights.

The harem in us

In her autobiographical work The Harem in Us - The Fear of the Other and the Longing of Women , Fatima Mernissi tells of her happy childhood. She describes what it means to grow up in a harem: a life behind high walls, excluded from public life, without privacy. She compares the relatively free life in her grandmother's harem in the country and thus presents two different worlds of life for Muslim women in Morocco around 1945.

Publications

  • 1975: Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in Modern Muslim Society.
  • 1983: Le Maroc raconté par ses femmes.
    • German: The harem is not the world. 11 reports from the life of Moroccan women. Luchterhand Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-630-61789-1 .
  • 1984: L'amour dans les pays musulmans.
  • 1985: Femmes du Gharb.
  • 1987: Le harem politique - Le Prophète et les femmes.
    • German: The political harem - Mohammed and the women. Translated from the French by Veronika Kabis-Alamba. Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau, Basel, Vienna 1992, ISBN 3-451-04104-9 .
    • English 1991: The Veil and the Male Elite. A Feminist Interpretation of Women's Rights in Islam.
  • 1988: Shahrazad n'est pas marocaine.
  • 1990: Sultanes oubliées - Femmes chefs d'Etat en Islam.
    • German 1991: The Sultana. The power of women in the world of Islam.
    • new title: Women rulers under Islam - The repressed power of women in Islam. Translated from the French by Edgar Peinelt. Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau, Basel, Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-451-05478-7 .
    • English 1993: Forgotten Queens of Islam.
  • 1992: La Peur-Modernité.
  • 1993: Women's Rebellion and Islamic Memory.
  • 1994: The Harem Within. (New title: Dreams of Trespass - Tales of a Harem Girlhood. )
    • deutsch The harem in us - the fear of the other and the longing of women. With 22 black and white photos by Ruth V. Ward. Translated from the English by Michaela Link . Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau, Basel, Vienna 1995, ISBN 3-451-04430-7 .
  • 1997: Les Aït-Débrouille
  • 1998: Etes-vous vacciné contre le harem?
  • 2001: Scheherazade Goes West - Western Fantasies, Eastern Realities
    • German harem: Western fantasies - Eastern reality. Translated from the English by Kate Reiner. Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau, Basel, Vienna 2005, ISBN 3-451-05588-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Death report  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.deutschlandfunk.de  
  2. ↑ Jutta Szostak / Suleman Taufiq : The true veil is silence. Arab women authors speak up. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1995, ISBN 3-596-12422-0 , p. 29.
  3. ↑ Page about the award with photo
  4. ↑ Official website of the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation (English)
  5. ↑ Feminist and sociologist: Moroccan author Fatima Mernissi is dead , Spiegel Online , November 30, 2015
  6. ↑ Obituary for Fatima Mernissi: Icon of Arab Feminism - Qantara.de. Retrieved April 7, 2020 .
  7. ^ Middle East Studies Association. Retrieved April 7, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Mernissi, Fatima
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Moroccan sociologist and book author
DATE OF BIRTH 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Fez
DATE OF DEATH November 30, 2015
Place of death Rabat