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themselves to be dominant, are realizing that their understanding of power was misguided; they were the ones bound by outdated ideals, akin to captives in a 'harem dream', rather than being the authority figures they thought themselves to be.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.
We have a normal. As you move outside of your comfort zone, what was once the unknown and frightening becomes your new normal.
To put off the inevitable, we try to fix the city in place, remember it as it was, doing to the city what we would never allow to be done to ourselves. . . . New York City does not hold our former selves against us. Perhaps we can extend the same courtesy.
It's not a cold that you can get over. There is no anti-racist certification class. It's a set of socioeconomic traps and cultural values that are fired up every time we interact with the world. It is a thing you have to keep scooping out of the boat of your life to keep from drowning in it. I know it's hard work, but it's the price you pay for owning everything.
The best way to help Africans today is to help them to stand on their own feet. And the best way to do that is by helping create jobs.
Who you think you are will always be frightened of change. But it doesn't make any difference to who you truly are.
The key.. will be a new public awareness of how serious is the threat to the global environment. Those who have a vested interest in the status quo will probably continue to be able to stifle any meaningful change until enough citizens.. are willing to speak out.
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