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.
Interpretation
The quote highlights that the perceived power and control men believed they had in society is challenged by the emerging strength and agency of Arab women.
Fatema Mernissi's quote emphasizes a significant societal shift where Arab women are actively participating in public life, countering traditional views of femininity and masculinity. It suggests that men, who once believed themselves to be dominant, are realizing that their understanding of power was misguided; they were the ones bound by outdated ideals, akin to captives in a 'harem dream', rather than being the authority figures they thought themselves to be.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech highlighting the progress of gender equality in the Middle East.
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.
A woman can walk miles without making one single step forward. As a child born in a harem, I instinctively knew that to live is to open closed doors. To live is to look outside. To live is to step out. Life is trespassing.
Educated women armed with computers have defeated extremists by denying them a monopoly to define cultural identity and interpret religious texts. No extremist can say that women are inferior to men without being made a laughingstock on Al Jazeera. Islam insisted on equality between everyone.
You find in the Koran hundreds of verses to support women's rights, and perhaps four or five that do not.
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.
What can change the world today is the same thing that has changed it in the past-an idea and the service of dedicated, committed individuals to that idea.
We get stuck in old thought and behavior patterns that may have been effective when we were twelve months or twelve years old, but now only serve to hold us back. And, while those around us may have no problem correcting our minor flaws, they let the big ones slide, because it would mean attacking who we are.
Were all yearning for a wedge of sky, aren't we? I suspect God plants these yearnings in us so we'll at least try and change the course of things. We must try, that's all.
For the execution of the voyage to the Indies, I did not make use of intelligence, mathematics or maps.
To be born again means that we must be changed from a negative to a positive self-image - from inferiority to self-esteem, from fear to love, from doubt to trust.
Unlucky people are stuck in routines. When they see something new, they want no part of it. Lucky people always want something new. They're prepared to take risks and relaxed enough to see the opportunities in the first place.
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