Fatima Mernissi on women and education

Dr. KECHIKECHE Nabil

Faculty of letters and human sciences

Abd al Malik Saadi University

Tetouan, Morocco,

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Abstract: This article aims to engage with Fatima Mernissi’s analysis on how the
establishment of the Caliphate as a political proposition, strongly contributed in
occulting the role of women in the early Arab Muslim countries and later on in MENA.
It provides a detailed summary of the major arguments used to advocate this thesis and
partially challenges them. It informs of how the establishment of the Caliphate crashed
the early seeds of democratic practice and rational thinking for the benefit of despotic
ruling, which by consequence, aborted the potential political and social struggles of both
women and men. The article examines also how the male elite induced dogmatic
readings of the sacred texts to eradicate opposition, which served as well to depict
women as inferior and unfit for the public space and the political environment. The
article also examines how the ancient establishment of the Caliphate was created and
how it did convert into other than the promise of social justice for the Ummah in general
and for women more specifically.

Keywords: Fatima Mernissi; Caliphate; democracy; MENA.

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 Women and the Caliphate

One of the very main causes of the appearance of the false Hadith, that is in some

cases a misogynic text attributed to the Prophet, may have been conditioned by the

atmosphere installed after that the Rashidun Caliphate faded away. In that period, which

started with the reign of the Caliph Mu’awiya, each group claimed to have a better

understanding of the sacred text. That was a claim which served the political interests of a

fraction of Muslims over the other, including that of women. This, Fatima Mernissi asserts,

caused a burst of false Hadith and interpretations of the sacred text in its integrity. The

establishment of the Caliphate, especially after the orthodoxy that followed the death of the

Prophet, can be pointed out as a major historical factor which should be included in the

discussion around causes of gender inequality as depicted in the work of Fatima Mernissi. In

the same vein, Mernissi engaged on a research to ‘excavate’ the contours of the Caliphate as

her thesis is strongly axed on the fact that it is from the Caliphate that despotism and

obscurantism crawled out to hinder any aspiration for a much more equality between Muslims

inside the realm. It should be informed that in the work of Fatima Mernissi, segregation based

on gender was only a symptom of a much greater illness: the lack of the democratic practice,

knowledge and equal opportunity for all Muslims. Consequently, it was suggested that the

inclusion of women in the social and political life should not be an end but a mean, if Arab

Muslim states are to advance.

As far as Fatima Mernissi is concerned, the Caliphate underwent a major shift after the

assassination of ‘Ali Ibn Abi Tâlib, cousin, son-in-law and companion of the prophet

Mohammed. What was to come next happened to transfer the person of Imam or Caliph 1 from
1
The words “imam” and “caliph” both mean leader of the Muslim community. The difference is that the first is
based on a spatial conception and the second on a temporal one. The imam is the person who is “in front of"; he
occupies the leading place. The caliph is the successor to the Prophet, the one who takes his place as governor of
the faithful. Often the word “imam” is used to designate the one who leads the prayers, whereas the caliph has
other duties (executing justice, directing the army, etc.) in addition to leading the prayers. One may say that a
caliph is always an imam (he leads the prayers), but an imam is not necessarily a caliph. He might simply be a
small-time official who leads the prayers in the neighborhood mosque. In the beginning the two functions were

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a position of vulnerability to a state of elevation, which widened the gap that was in the origin

of Islam so small between the governor and the governed. The Caliphate was never

proclaimed by the Prophet to be the appropriate system of governance and that this system

was a political theory developed by Muslim experts. In the same vein, Thomas W. Arnold

(2017) says that unlike any former political theory, the Caliphate and the circumstances of its

making, were unique compared to how Christianity integrated the political system of its time.

Indeed, unlike the case of the Arabian tribes, the Holy Roman Empire was consciously and

deliberately a revival of a preexisting political institution that had been in existence before the

birth of Christianity and was later on revived under a specifically Christian character. Side by

side with the Emperor was the Pope, and the Pope possessed spiritual authority and functions

which were denied to the Emperor; as the Vicar of God upon earth, he ruled over and guided

the souls of men, while it was the part of the Emperor to deal with the concerns of their

bodies. There was a long conflict over the problem of the true relationship between these two

independent authorities; throughout the centuries during which the Holy Roman Empire was a

living force in Europe, the distinction between temporal and spiritual authority was never put

aside.

The circumstances under which the Caliphate arose were entirely different. It grew

without any deliberate pre-vision, out of the circumstances of that vast empire which may

almost be said to have been flung in the faces of the Arabs. The Caliphate as a political

institution was thus the child of its age, and did not look upon itself as the revival of any

political institution of an earlier date. 2 Yet, in such distinct model of ruling, the result was the

birth of a process by which the Islamic history was animated by two major factors, Fatima

Mernissi says: the choice of the man to be Caliph, in addition to the good implementation of

linked; the caliph necessarily had to lead the prayers. But very quickly the functions were separated. The caliph
assigned someone else to fulfill the duties of imam in his place. Nevertheless, when they refer to leadership in
the political sense, “imam” and “caliph” are synonymous.
2
Thomas W. Arnold., (2017) The Caliphate. 1 st ed. New York: Routledge, 10.

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Shari’a that was drawn from Coran and the Sunna. As a result, in the process of investigating

the persona of the Imam or Caliph, the author advances that in the very beginning of Islam,

the Imam was never to be above criticism, powerful or distant from the people he was
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supposed to rule. In the book Islam and Democracy, Fatima Mernissi compares between

rulers of early Islam and the ones who have been in charge during modern times:

“But the extreme vulnerability that was an important component of

the imamate—the theory of the ideal leader and the relationship
between leader and followers—has disappeared in modern Islam,
which politicians shamelessly manipulate to hide their anachronistic
personal desire to exercise a narrow authoritarianism.” 4

Further information about the nature and fundamentals of the Caliph in many of the

Muslim sects and fractions can be found. But the concern here and that is what Fatima

Mernissi was alert to, was the Sunni Imam. N. J. Coulson (1957), for instance, brings much

more highlight on the types of Imams that subsist in the Muslim different sects and declares

that while in the Shi’a sect the Imam is infallible, Kharijis, on the other side, have a much

more democratic and egalitarian doctrine, whose Imam is simply primus inter pares, elected

and deposed by the will of the whole community. As for the Sunni political theory, it sees,

Coulson says, the ideal State as a co-operative partnership between governor and governed,

both owing a common obedience to the revealed law!5 Another scholar who comes to

confirm the statements of Fatima Mernissi -in the balance Islam saw in putting the governor

and the governed in the same status before god- is George Stewart (1931) who regarded the

Caliph, in contrast to the pope, both as a spatial and spiritual entity. Arnold (2017) on the

other hand dedicated a whole chapter of his book The Caliphate to unveil the existing
3
In another context, the scholar asked also the question why a woman is never to be Caliph and if there was a
woman Caliph in Islamic history, why does she never appear in the historical records of Islam.
4
Mernissi, F., (1992). Islam and democracy - Fear of the moden world. 1st ed. New York: Basic Books, 35.

5
N. J. Coulson. (1957). The State and the Individual in Islamic Law. The International and Comparative Law
Quarterly, 6:1, 49-60.

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theological sanctions awaiting the Caliph if ever he fails in his mission.6 That is to say, most of

the literature on the topic affirms and reaffirms the statements of Fatima Mernissi on the

uniqueness of the Islamic political theory. Her question seems mostly legitimate, as a result.

In fact, she may have been attempting to understand how this innovative political theory turned

out to be a despotic management of affairs and a decay that was sensed on all levels. The main

cause of that may have been the distortion of the duty of the Caliph and his functions. The

Caliphate mutated to Mulk and to do so, a whole body of theorists and scholars were armed

with the authority to theorize and cogitate over the sacred texts and how they may be

exploited to serve the ‘Caliph’ in charge.

Furthermore and in the process of demonstrating how the establishment of the Caliphate

was a turning point in the Islamic history and one of the key factors of gender inequality to

follow centuries after, Mernissi directed her attention to two major circles of research: The

Hadith and the rationalist tradition in early Islam. As far as the Hadith is concerned, Fatima

Mernissi demonstrates that the problem connected to what is later to form one of the pillars of

Sunna7, started soon after the death of the Prophet.8 The necessity to constantly need to

designate a Caliph, when it was not largely posed when ‘Umar and Abu Bakr were alive, grew

with the succession of generations. Each group which sought power in governance,

proclaimed to detain Hadith and an interpretation of the Coran that legitimated a fraction over

another. The distortion of the sacred text to serve political goals as well as male supremacy

was then born and perfected. The governing group used, as a result, the Fuqaha to maintain

grip over power and this created even more dissension among the ranks, not only of the

political rivals but among the Muslim experts who had the necessary techniques and tools to

legitimize fabricated Hadith and to attain to an interpretation of the sacred text that can serve
6
Thomas W. Arnold., (2017) The Caliphate. 1 st ed. New York: Routledge, 42.
7
Sahih al-Bukhari and Muslim.
8
Mernissi, F., (1991). The veil and the male elite: a feminist interpretation of women's rights in Islam. 1st ed.
United States: Perseus Books Publishing, 41.

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the interests of the political group the Faqīh may have been affiliated with. That is a common

remark when reading Fatima Mernissi. Her quest was on lands that were often proclaimed to

be the specialty of the Fuqaha; and that the sacred texts as well as the Fiqh were a sea that is

impossible to navigate in if one was not he himself a Faqih. That she refuted and emerged

from that a quest which led her through the contours of a craft so far mastered by the Muslim

experts only. Yet, the author does not deny that the Fiqh itself was at the very beginning the

tool Muslim experts had to forge to counter attack the amount of fabricated texts they were

facing:

“It is easy to imagine how important it was for each interest group to
seek legitimacy in and through the sacred text. With the historical
events as background, we can now appreciate in their true measure
the two contradictory tendencies that were at odds with each other in
the elaboration of the Hadith: on one hand, the desire of the male
politicians to manipulate the sacred; and on the other hand, the fierce
determination of the scholars to oppose them through the elaboration
of the fiqh (a veritable science of religion) with its concepts and its
methods of verification and counter verification”9.

Therefore, here I come to the second part of the article, generated by a question that

can be formulated as follows: If the greed for power and the fierce political combat that was

raging between multiple fractions pushed fabricated Hadith to be taken into account, how did

the Fiqh, which was initially forged to counter-attack false Hadith, become also a weapon in

the hands of the despotic Caliph and the male elite in general? The answer of Fatima Mernissi

was Chrystal clear: The extermination of the rationalist tradition by the Caliph was the

determining factor in that matter. Fatima Mernissi explains that the struggle between the

despotic Caliph and the Muslim experts can be illustrated in a school of thought name

9
Mernissi, F., (1991). The veil and the male elite: a feminist interpretation of women's rights in Islam. 1st ed.
United States: Perseus Books Publishing, 53.

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Mu’tazila.10 These scholars raised the question of qadar (predestination), that is the question

of whether an individual is responsible for his or her own acts. What is interesting here is that

this very same question posed by the Mu’tazila strongly connects the discussion to the issue

already discussed by Fatima Mernissi in her works and that is the individual responsibility. N.

J. Coulson (1957) advances that with the modern trend towards democratic forms of

government, one aspect of western legal systems which is no doubt of particular appeal to

many reformers-especially in those Muslim countries, whose ultimate constitution is yet to be

determined, is the notion of defined liberties of the individual. It might, therefore, be pertinent

to make a brief assessment of the relationship between ruler and subject which finds

expression in orthodox Islamic legal doctrine.11 That might exactly be what the investigation

of Fatima Mernissi was aiming at even though Coulson (1957) offers a much more holistic

approach to the issue of the individual responsibilities. I can say that the idea of the rule of

law should carry with it certain essential implications. The first of these is, obviously enough,

the recognition of certain individual liberties by the law itself. No such recognition is to be

found in the Shari’a; and the formulation of a list of specific liberties of the individual, as in

the American constitution for instance, would be entirely foreign to its whole spirit. Islamic

religious law sees as its essential function the portrayal of an ideal relationship of man with

his Creator: the regulation of all human relationships. Those of man with his neighbor or with

the State, are subsidiary to, and designed to serve, this one ultimate purpose. A distinction is

indeed drawn between the rights of God (huquq Allah) and the rights of men (huquq 'ibad),
10
Mu’tazila school of thought used philosophical and rationalistic approach to interpret religion. At the early stage,
Mu’tazila were not united on a single doctrine. The man who put forward five points, which were called theological
doctrines of Mu’tazila, was Abu l-Hudhayl Muhammad ibn al-Hudhayl al-Allaf al-Abdi, died between 840 and 850.
All the Mu’tazila were united on these theological doctrines.Retrieved from the Middle-East Journal of Scientific
research 12:7, pp1032.

11
N. J. Coulson. (1957). The State and the Individual in Islamic Law. The International and Comparative Law
Quarterly, 6:1, 49-60. See also:
Hayrettin Yücesoy. (2009). Putting the Caliph in His Place: Power, Authority, and the Late Abbasid Caliphate
by ERIC J. HANNE. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 41:2, 319-320.

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but most authorities would regard only property rights as belonging essentially to the latter

class; and in any case, on the higher plane, whole of the Shari’a is haqq Allah, for all rights

and obligations are said to derive from commands of the divine.12

If we go back to the Mu’tazila, their tradition considered ‘aql a precious endowment

and its defenders glow in our history against a seamy background of political intrigue. The

Mu’tazila were continuously combated by the holders of power, who condemned them as

falasifa (philosophers) who were “polluting” Islam with the humanistic patrimony of the

ancient Greece.13 The accusation put on the Mu’tazila is similar to many of the accusations put

against progressive writers, scholars and even imams in modern Islamic states and that vary

from shirk (atheist) to being affiliated with the West, which is in the mind of the

fundamentalist, aiming to ruin the Islamic world by dispatching it from its glorious history

and tradition, two that Fatima Mernissi unveil to be very exclusive of all rationalist attempts

to rethink the sacred text and its implication on Islam and Muslim women:

“For fifteen centuries Moslem politicians have censored intellectuals

who wanted to synthesize the humanistic traditions by labeling as
polluting the very thing that creates the dynamic of all civilization: its
capacity to assimilate and use new ideas and accomplishments of the
human spirit.”14

The thesis of Fatima Mernissi may be hard to contest and the literature written on the

topic may support that. Indeed, the Abbasid reign was a harsh period for the Mu’tazila. Atta

Mohammad (2012) advances in the abstract of the paper he entitled “M’utazila-Heresy;

Theological and Rationalist M’utazila; Al-mamun, Abbasid Caliph; Al-mutawakkil, Abbasid

Caliph; The Traditionalists” that Mu’tazila were declared heretic by the Traditionalists and

the political elite because they did not conform to the traditional religious beliefs and

12
Ibid.,
13
Mernissi, F., (1992). Islam and democracy - Fear of the moden world. 1st ed. New York: Basic Books, 35.
14
Ibid., 39.

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practices. They posed threat to the religious and political authority of the Traditionalist ‘ulama

and theologians, as well as the authority of the ruling elite. Atta Mohammad (2012) adds that

Rationalism and free will were a hallmark of the Mu’tazila. They were the first who used

human reason to interpret the religious dogma in Islam. Mir Valiuddin (1977) argues that the

Mu’tazila were the staunch rationalists. They believed that revealed knowledge could be

interpreted through reason. The great Mu’tazila scholar Abu ‘l-Hudhail, argued that the

human being was bound to use reason and to understand God in the presence of revelation.

Those who failed in this respect would be punished. It is prime duty of humanity to seek what

is just and to avoid evil. Therefore, The Mu’tazila were branded heretics by the

Traditionalists. Their rationalistic interpretation of the doctrine and the notion of free will

became the case to accuse them of heresy. There were also issues of social privileges the

Traditionalists enjoyed as well as the political authority governing them. That was also at

stake in the endeavor to brand the M’utazila as heretics.15

In sum, one of the factors causing gender inequality in the Arab Muslim world may be

the establishment and the development of the Caliphate, which started in the very beginning

as a perpetuation of the proximity the governor had with the governed in the time of the

Prophet, but one which ended up falling into despotism and authoritarian ruling. To my mind,

the literature on the topic of the Caliphate with all the parameters that fall under it, namely the

15
Atta, Mohammad. (2012) Mutazila-Heresy; Theological and Rationalist Mutazila; Al-mamun, Abbasid Caliph;
Al-mutawakkil, Abbasid Caliph; The Traditionalists. IDOSI publications, 12:7, 1031-1038. See also:
John A. Williams. (1982). EducationThe Early Abbasid Caliphate: A Political History by Hugh Kennedy.
Society for history education. 15:4, 603-604.
E. G. B. (1901). Baghdad during the 'Abbásid Caliphate, from Contemporary Arabic and Persian Sources by
Guy le Strange. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 349-351.
Hugh, Kennedy., (2016). The early Abbasid Caliphate. 1st ed. New York: Routledge, 22.

10
fabricated Hadith and the extermination of the rationalist schools of thought seem

overwhelming. The addition of Fatima Mernissi resides in connecting between such issue and

the daily life of Arab Muslim women in modern Muslim states. Indeed, the aspiration of

democracy which might guarantee equal rights for all, equal political representation, equal

political participation, individual liberty and free will, are the necessary components of any

aspiration to development. It is then the occultation of women’s rights that is both a symptom

of the illness residing in modern Islamic state and a trace to follow if one wants to unveil the

processes by which the sacred text in Islam was distorted to serve rulers whose greed for

power overwhelmed their obligation to guarantee equal opportunity, liberty, dignity and

prosperity for all. That includes those of women of the Ummah, and what is later to become

modern state citizens within the MENA region.

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 References:

Atta, Mohammad. (2012) Mutazila-Heresy; Theological and Rationalist Mutazila; Al-

mamun, Abbasid Caliph; Al-mutawakkil, Abbasid Caliph; The Traditionalists. IDOSI
publications, 12:7, 1031-1038.
Bukhārī, M.I (1966). Sahih Bukhari. Karachi: Muhammad Sarid.

E. G. B. (1901). Baghdad during the 'Abbásid Caliphate, from Contemporary Arabic

and Persian Sources by Guy le Strange. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain
and Ireland, 349-351.

Hayrettin Yücesoy. (2009). Putting the Caliph in His Place: Power, Authority, and the
Late Abbasid Caliphate by ERIC J. HANNE. International Journal of Middle East Studies,
41:2, 319-320.

Hugh, Kennedy., (2016). The early Abbasid Caliphate. 1st ed. New York: Routledge.

John A. Williams. (1982). EducationThe Early Abbasid Caliphate: A Political History

by Hugh Kennedy. Society for history education. 15:4, 603-604.

Mernissi, F., (1991). The veil and the male elite: a feminist interpretation of women's
rights in Islam. 1st ed. United States: Perseus Books Publishing.

Mernissi, F., (1992). Islam and democracy - Fear of the moden world. 1st ed. New
York: Basic Books.

N. J. Coulson. (1957). The State and the Individual in Islamic Law. The International
and Comparative Law Quarterly, 6:1, 49-60.

Thomas W. Arnold., (2017) The Caliphate. 1 st ed. New York: Routledge.

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