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themselves to be dominant, are realizing that their understanding of power was misguided; they were the ones bound by outdated ideals, akin to captives in a 'harem dream', rather than being the authority figures they thought themselves to be.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.
Ultimately, change will happen when problems persist and enough people are concerned.
I sit here as the first African-American attorney general, serving the first African-American President of the United States. And that has to show that we have made a great deal of progress. But there's still more we have to travel along this road so we get to the place that is consistent with our founding ideals.
It can be scary to find out you've been wrong about something but we can't be afraid to change our minds, to accept that things are different, that they'll never be the same, for better or for worse. We have to be willing to give up what we used to believe. The more we're willing to accept what is and not what we thought, we'll find ourselves exactly where we belong.
The door might not be opened to a woman again for a long, long time, and I had a kind of duty to other women to walk in and sit down on the chair that was offered, and so establish the right of others long hence and far distant in geography to sit in the high seats.
This is a great country, but fortunately for you, it is not perfect. There is much to be done to bring about complete equality. Remove hunger. Bring reality closer to theory and democratic principles.
My moms always told me, 'How long you gonna play the victim?' I can say I'm mad and I hate everything, but nothing really changes until I change myself.
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