My Presentation' Fiction

FICTION PAPER

“THE LIFE AND WORKS OF FATIMA MERNISSI”

The paper is made to Fulfill Assignment of Fiction

Lecture : DR. Phil Dewi Candraningrum, M.Ed

Written by:

1.     NASIIB WAHYU W. A 320090108

2.     NUR SYIFA’ FUADINA     A 320090131

3.     VINDA KIKY Y.T                A 320090134

4.     FEBRIANA W.                     A 320090135

5.     ADILI ROSIANI                   A 320090140

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

SCHOOL OF TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION

MUHAMMADIYAH UNIVERSITY OF SURAKARTA

2011

A.    THE LIFE OF FATIMA MERNISSI

Fatima mernissi was born in 1940 in Fez, Morocco, Mernissi belonged to a family of wealthy landowners and agriculturalists. Though raised in privileged surroundings, removed from the poverty experienced by most Moroccans, her childhood was spent in the confines of the harem structure. As a young girl, Mernissi lived in the more formal harem of her home in Fez as well as the rural harem of her maternal grandmother. Contrary to Western notions of the harem as an exotic place in which women are kept for the erotic pleasure of men, Mernissi was raised in a traditional domestic harem, which consists of extended family and is designed to keep women sheltered from men outside of the family and the public sphere in general.

At times, this highly circumscribed upbringing prompted feelings of frustrating isolation, the intimate connections fostered among the women created solidarity. Mernissi's upbringing in this environment impacted her later development as a scholar. She received her early education at Koranic schools and, after completing a degree in political science at University Mohammed V, Mernissi was awarded a scholarship to study at the Sorbonne in Paris. She later moved to the United States to attend Brandeis University, where she earned a doctorate in sociology. After completing her education, Mernissi returned to Morocco, where she became a professor of sociology at University Mohammed V in Rabat. Mernissi has served as a visiting professor at Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley.

The child's naive attempts to understand the meaning of the word harem. Her Moroccan family with fresh eyes, without the screen of western condemnation. To our surprise, we find that the distance between our life and the harem's life is but a step of the imagination. Those words bring to mind the many rules regulating the spaces move. There is the rent to be paid in order to have my own private space (the previous tenant could not follow this rule and became homeless within a month).

There is the privacy of my neighbors homes and yards, go uninvited, the rules of the road, break so often on my bicycle, the subtle rules of experience and qualifications which exclude most work places... Each rule can bring with it "dreams of trespass." Denied freedom is more difficult to recognize if we cannot see the street beyond the gate, the man restricting our actions. This find to be true of my city life also. A psychology book offers a picture of a young woman dancing on a platform while waiting for her train as an example of a "histrionic" personality, children brake into songs, but adults seem to need more formal occasions for singing, dancing, and self expression to be permitted. Distinctions between the freedom of doing and the freedom of being is a central theme for thinkers such as Rollo May or Simone Weil.

Remarkably, it is an analphabet woman, divorced by her husband, restricted in her movements, without a space of her own who imparted this deep wisdom to the child. Mernissi's aunt had managed to remember a great deal about the history, literature, geography she had heard... and had put all her energy into the freedom of being, which only required her imagination. The women in young Fatima Mernissi's life are trapped, their actions severely restricted, yet they offer us a testimony of stoic lives of resistance to hopelessness. Hope can come in the form of a dream. It is an inspiration to those of us more fortunate in our circumstances, caught nevertheless in circles we cannot escape, until we feel the circles.

B.    THE WORKS OF FATIMA MERNISSI

In Beyond the Veil, Mernissi examines differences between Western and traditional Muslim conceptions of female sexuality and gender, a subject that she revisits in many of her later works. In stark contrast to traditional Western views of women as inferior and passive, Mernissi argues that many Muslim scholars have historically portrayed women as active and in possession of an aggressive sexuality. She asserts that such traditions as veiling and domestic isolation arose from a desire to control the potential threat posed to the social order by women's sexuality.

Mernissi's research for Le Maroc raconte par ses femmes (1984; Doing Daily Battle: Interviews with Moroccan Women) involved conducting extensive interviews with eleven Moroccan women, which she transcribes and edits in the book. Speaking about their daily lives, Mernissi's interviewees discuss the challenges they face in the domestic sphere as well as the sense of empowerment they gain from working to provide for their families, whether as maids or teachers.

In The Veil and the Male Elite, Mernissi turned to the Koran and other traditional Islamic texts to examine how the emancipatory aspects of early Islam were overridden or forgotten due to the efforts of Mohammed's critics. Mernissi emphasizes the prominent strategic roles played by Mohammed's wives and other women in the early years of Islam, as well as the property rights and spiritual equality accorded to women during this period. She asserts that the egalitarian potential of Islam at its founding was lost in the face of opposition from the Amale elite, companions of Mohammed who resisted the social change arising from women's new status, preferring that women lead private lives under their veils.

Building on her efforts to recover the vital role of women in early Islam, Mernissi profiles a number of notable women in The Forgotten Queens of Islam—queens, wives, and mothers—from the eighth century to the present who attained considerable political power within predominantly Muslim states. Spurred by opposition to the 1988 democratic election of Benazir Bhutto, a woman, as prime minister of Pakistan, Mernissi documents the lives of these remarkable women and argues strongly against the common misconception that Muslim women have never played meaningful roles in the political arena. Instead, she maintains that the history of women's political participation has been conveniently forgotten by both Muslim and Western scholars, especially as embodied in historian Bernard Lewis's flat contention that “there are no queens in Islam.” Mernissi highlights the dual nature—both sacred and secular—of Muslim conceptions of power and advocates for a secular approach to political legitimacy that would acknowledge women's rights in all spheres.

Unlike her previous studies, Islam and Democracy: Fear of the Modern World (1992) focuses not only on women's issues, but also addresses the broader issue of the role of democracy in Muslim nations. She draws connections between movements for women's rights and those campaigning for greater democracy by insisting that both face resistance because they pose profound threats to the established social order. For the Muslim world to truly embrace democracy, Mernissi suggests that Muslims must reexamine their values and perspectives on the West—a task that Mernissi herself begins through a deconstruction of Muslim myths and the roots of Islamic fundamentalism.

In contrast to her other works, Dreams of Trespass is a memoir that recounts Mernissi's childhood experiences of harem life. In this autobiographical account, the harem is depicted as a sheltered and dull space that allows few freedoms. Mernissi describes the frustration felt by her mother and other women with the restrictions of harem life as well as her own efforts to subvert them, such as listening to a prohibited radio or venturing across rooftops to avoid the scrutiny of the doorkeeper. Although Mernissi managed to leave the confines of the harem, her memoir reveals the extent to which the early harem experiences impacted her later life and writing.

Mernissi returned to her sociological work in her next book, Women's Rebellion and Islamic Memory (1996), in which she argues that the oppression of women by Arab governments is part of a larger effort to suppress democracy. Mernissi urges Middle Eastern nations to support women's rights to education as well as to turn away from the dangers of militarization. As in her earlier works, Mernissi again takes a forceful and compelling tone in advocating for the rights of women and democratic values as a whole.

 In Scheherazade Goes West: Different Cultures, Different Harems (2001), Mernissi returns to the theme of the harem and the differences between Western and Muslim views of women, focusing on Western understandings of the harem itself, which tend to emphasize the role of sexual interactions to the exclusion of intellectual exchange. Mernissi argues that the latter is a central feature of Muslim conceptions of the harem and thus reveals how Western relations between the sexes may be no more liberated than those found in the traditional harem. In response, Mernissi calls for greater sensitivity to the importance of cultural differences within feminist analysis and cautions against drawing hasty transcultural assumptions.