Book: The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women`s Rights in Islam

Author: Fatima Mernissis
Publisher: Perseus Books, Cambridge 1991

The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women’s Rights in Islam

Reviewed by Mohammad Gill

I came across Fatima Mernissi’s name only a few years back. It is a reflection on my personal ignorance not on Mernissi’s repute since she was already well-established and a world-renowned Muslim feminist author and personality. Also, this review of “The veil….” is somewhat belated since the book was published in 1987 and its English translation in 1991. The book however is so interesting and so important for the Muslim readership that I believe even this belated review will be useful in introducing the book to those who, like me, may not be aware of Mernissis and her works. Without using it as an excuse, let me say that my main interest until 1990s was “Civil Engineering Hydraulics” and I was not very well-versed in other areas of human knowledge.

Anyhow, several years back I came across Mernissi’s “The Forgotten Queens of Islam” and I gifted a copy of this book to my daughter. I read this book selectively and thought I should find time to do a serious study of Mernissi and her works.

I was impressed by “The Veil” for its providing a sociological background, albeit rather brief, of the introduction of Hijab in the earliest society of Muslims, the society of the Prophet and his associates (sahabah). For instance, the ‘curtain’ (sitr) part of the hijab was occasioned by an incident in which the Prophet had invited nearly all his Muslim companions in Medina to his wedding supper on the occasion of his marriage with Zaynab Bint Jahsh. In due time, all the guests left excepting three who continued chatting idly till late in the night. Anas ibn Malik, the Prophet’s servant, narrated that when the malingerers had finally departed, Allah revealed verse 53 of Chapter 33, Al-Ahzab, of the Holy Quran:

O Ye who believe! Enter not the Prophet’s house until leave is given you – for a meal (and then) not (so early as) to wait for its preparation; but when ye are invited, enter, and when ye have taken your meal, disperse, without seeking familiar talk. Such (behavior) annoys the Prophet, he is ashamed to dismiss you but Allah is not shamed (to tell you the truth). And when ye ask (his ladies) for anything ye want, ask them from before a screen; that makes for greater purity for your hearts and for theirs. Nor is it right that ye should annoy Allah’s Messenger, or that ye should marry the widows after him at any time. Truly, such a thing is in Allah’s sight an enormity.

The book is in two parts. The first part consists of four chapters as follows: 1. The Muslim and Time, 2. The Prophet and Hadith, 3. A Tradition of Misogyny (1), and 4. A Tradition of Misogyny (2). The second part consists of six chapters, which are 5. The Hijab, the Veil, 6. The Prophet and Space, 7. The Prophet and Women, 8. ‘Umar and the Men of Medina, 9. The Prophet as Military leader and 10. The Hijab Descends on Medina. The book consists of 228 pages.

After Hejira, the Prophet went to Medina which was intellectually dominated by the Jews. There was instant tension between the Jews and the Prophet who had a mission to propagate Islam. According to Mernissi (p. 68), “The Jews saw the Prophet as an impostor who stole their prophets and ‘indigenized’ them to his own advantage. It was in their interest to get rid of the Prophet for two reasons. Not only was he sapping the source of their prestige – access to the sacred, to Heaven, to the book revealed by God, to the prophets – but he was also using their own prophets, their own legends, their own knowledge, to constitute himself as a force that would dominate the world. The Prophet was naïve enough to believe that the Jewish community would see in him only an ally.” This tension changed into enmity and in due time into an historical enmity, which is still dominating the world scene and is imperiling the world peace.

A good deal of the book discusses the position of women in Islam. In the Preface, on page ix, Mernissi wrote, “When I finished writing this book I had come to understand one thing: if women’s rights are a problem for some modern Muslim men, it is neither because of the Koran nor the Prophet, nor the Islamic tradition, but simply because those rights conflict with the interests of a male elite.”

In the Conclusion chapter (pp. 194-195) Mernissi asked, “How did the tradition succeed in transforming the Muslim woman into that submissive, marginal creature who buries herself and only goes out into the world timidly and huddled in her veil? Why does the Muslim man need such a mutilated companion?” And she provides the answers to these questions also by referring to Jurji Zaydan (Tarikh al-Tamaddun al-Islam, vol. 5, p. 70), “..the downward slide as far as women are concerned took place under the Abbasid dynasty. That period that is regularly presented to us as the Golden Age (eighth and ninth centuries) was the period of international conquest for the Muslims and also of the arrival of the jawari (women slaves) coming from the conquered countries:…”

The curtain (sitr), a screen separating the female living quarters from other space, was enjoined on the Muslim ummah after the incident on Prophet’s wedding night as already mentioned above. The hijab, veiling apparel, was prescribed in Medina when the street hoodlums tried to molest some Muslim women, among others, seeking tar’rud, illicit sexual gratification. On questioning them, they rationalized their behavior by asserting that they only sought out the slave girls and women. In order to identify Muslim women from the others, the Prophet enjoined them to wear jilbab, a loose full length gown, after the revelation of verse 59 of the Sura, Al-Ahzab. These injunctions were further amplified and reinforced by verse 31 of Sura 24, Light.

The book under review is both interesting and enlightening. It describes the resistance on the part of the first generation of the Muslim society to relinquish the old customs which had prevailed in the pre-Islamic society, the period of Jahiliya, and dominating women was one aspect of this old and despicable tradition.

The people of Medina were not influenced by the jahiliya customs with the result that their women were more liberated and would argue and talk back to their husbands and other male chauvinists. The immigrants, the Prophet’s refugees from Mecca (the Muhajarun), on the other hand, were not used to such liberal attitudes and they wanted to maintain their domination (status quo) regardless of Prophet’s liberal attitudes. Implementation of the divine revelations in the newly created Muslim society thus presented occasionally difficulties and resistance.

The author, Fatima Mernissi, was born in Fez, Morocco, in 1940. A sociology professor, Mernissi is a prolific author and respected feminist scholar of Islam. She received a Ph.D. in sociology from Brandeis. Mernissi has been a visiting lecturer at U.C. Berkeley (1979), and Harvard (1986), among several other prominent assignments.

“The focus of Mernissi’s research and writing has been developing a pluralist Islamic civil society where feminism – not extremism is the foundation,” ……

The English translation of the book was prepared by Mary Jo Lakeland and the book was published by Perseus Books, Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1991.