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Summary: Mernissi and her feminism
Review: Mernissi is possessed by the insecurity of her traumatic childhood. The very title of the book "Forgotten Queens of Islam" completely discounts the reality that women even in today's Islamic societies weild political power and involvement unparalleled by women in any other society including the West. The reality remains that these "Queens" of Islam were never forgotten [Raziya sultan is still fresh in my mind from my high school history class in India]. The tradition of women ruling muslim countries was rarely broken as is witnessed by women such as Megawati, Vice President of Indonesia [largest muslim county], Benazir Bhutto, ex-Prime Minister of Pakistan [2nd largest muslim country], Shaiyk Hasina and Begum Khalida Zia, Prime Ministers of Bangladesh [3rd largest muslim country], Massumeh Ebtekar, Vice President of Iran [4th largest muslim country], Tansu Ciller, the Prime Minister of Turkey... and the list goes on. To be frank, the idea of feminism is a joke in the realm of Islam. Mernissi is fooling the westerners by selling books about how women are supposedly "oppressed" in muslim countries!!
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Summary: Women who have held the reins of power
Review: Mernissi recounts the extraordinary stories of fifteen queens and reflects on the implications for the ways in which politics is practiced in Islam today, a world in which women are largely excluded form the political domain. Essential not only for those interested in the history of Islam, but also for all those committed to contextualizing women's history and to multiculturalizing feminist discourse.
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Summary: An analysis of female power in Islam
Review: The 1st part describes definitions of words like power, caliph, queen and harem and how these definitons exclude women from power. The 2nd part describes briefly some Islamic Queens. A chapter with the title "The Queens of Yemen" mainly describes the life and death of Ali, son-in-law of the Prophet, and the Shi'ite - Sunni controversy. The book concludes with some thoughts on a 'Medina democracy'.Although the book could have focussed more on actual Islamic Queens, it still is a rare book about an interesting, but hardly explored subject.
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