FATIMA MERNISSI

Modern Muslim societies have to face the fact that the traditional family mutilates the woman be depriving her from her humanity .… Allah does not talk to them.

Throughout its history Islam has been marked by two trends: an intellectual trend that speculated on the philosophical foundations of the world and humanity, and another trend that turned political challenge violent by resort to force.

As both Christianity and Judaism have done, Islam can not only survive but thrive in a secular state. Once disassociated from coercive power, it will witness a renewal of spirituality….The secular state has not killed religion; rather, it has put a brake on the state’s manipulation of religion. It took three centuries of efforts by many European philosophers and several revolutions for this fundamental nuance to be developed, accepted, and made understandable to the masses.

Democracy is an open wound that the East has been carrying for centuries.

Freedom in the Arab world is synonymous with disorder.

Like the government, Arab businessmen fear democracy and the possibility that their workers might be transformed into responsible citizens who might demand their rights.

Our nation, frustrated by its desire for full employment and political responsibility, is becoming a huge land of individuals who roam stranding in place, one eye on the television and the other on their passports.

The history of Islam’s leaders is a sorry tale of one political assassination after another …

If women's rights are a problem for some modern Muslim men, it is neither because of the Quran nor the Prophet, nor the Islamic tradition, but simply because those rights conflict with the interests of a male elite.

The Western man declares that in order to be beautiful, a woman must look 14 years old. If she dares to look 50, or worse, 60, she is beyond the pale. By putting the spotlight on the female child and framing her as the ideal of beauty, he condemns the mature woman to invisibility.

Someone else is going to read for me or go at my place to the mosque, and/or to tell me you shouldn't take anything from the West because the West is the enemy and so on. It is to me to decide. I am intelligent enough to be critical towards the West and take what I need and reject what is bad for me.

One cannot understand what's happening to women in the Middle East if they don't realize that the mothers are a strong, progressive force. The mothers push the daughters to get out of the harem, to get the education, to achieve what they could not even dream of.

Now that Arab women are pouring into the streets by the million, men discover with dismay that they, not women, were the captives of the harem dream.

If, by chance, you were to meet me at the Casablanca airport or on a boat sailing from Tangiers, you would think me self-confident, but I am not. Even now, at my age, I am frightened when crossing borders because I am afraid of failing to understand strangers.

Consumerist ads brainwash us into individualist and egotistic self-love.

To me, the Quran is a research book.

To understand the fanatic rejection of women's liberation in the Muslim world, one has to take into account the time factor. Most of us educated women have illiterate mothers. The conservative wave against women in the Muslim world is a defense mechanism against profound changes in both sex roles and the touchy subject of sexual identity.

There, they tell me to wear the veil. Here, they are telling me to put my hips in a little girl's skirt, and I am this lovely full woman. You've got this Ph.D. and you're worrying, 'Am I skinny enough?'

The modern Muslim state has never presented itself as secular. Muslim nationalist forces, trapped by a militant and colonialist West unable to share or export its humanism, were driven to build up a rampart, to entrench themselves within the past.

If there is one thing that the women and men of the late 20th century who have an awareness and enjoyment of history can be sure of, it is that Islam was not sent from Heaven to foster egotism and mediocrity.

The woman with dark hair, wide hips, and a few extra pounds has always been the essence of beauty in Morocco.

Sharia law does not exist in the Koran. It was created by man.

There has been a terrible hemorrhage of educated women to the West where they can flourish. I understand, but it is terrible. We must stay home.

Morocco is such a beautiful place. It's incredibly beautiful. And also it is captivating place because for a writer, you feel that you make impact. I mean, when I write something in the press, the day after in the fish market, people will be discussing it.

While Muslim men describe themselves as insecure in their harems, real or imagined, Westerners describe themselves as self-assured heroes with no fears of women. The tragic dimension so present in Muslim harems - fear of women and male self-doubt - is missing in the Western harem.