Fatima Mernissi Research Paper

“My hope emerges from those places of struggle where I witness individuals positively transforming their lives and the world around them”(hooks 2003 p.xiv). This quote from Gloria Jean Waatkins ( bell hooks) is the epitome of how she views the world and the people around her. Known as one of the most prominent African American intellectuals she captures the minds and hearts of people all across the globe because of her dismissal of academic convention and her inclusion of personal reflection in her scholary work. Hooks, who addresses such subjects as feminism, civil rights and black womanhood, raises important questions about the tension between black women and white woman in the feminist movement and analyses how the media and popular culture portray African Americans. In this essay I hope to examine the life and some of the work of bell hook. In gaining a deeper knowledge of her work I then hope to compare her to Fatima Mernissi across a number of different subject areas. Fatima Mernissi, from an early age established herself as a campaigner for womens rights in Islam. Know as the first Islamic feminist, Mernissi’s classic study of sex roles , sexuality and
Throughout her work she continuously tracks both the historical and modern development of Islamic thought. Through the whole of her work she focuses on the subordination of women in Islam, however, she does not believe that this subordination has anything to do with the Qur’an. Her fieldwork focuses mainly on the lives of women in Morocco and throughout the 1970’s she conducted interviews with women from different class backgrounds which she has published in her book ‘Doing daily battle’. She too like hooks has many books and publications and in 2003 she was awarded the Prince of Asturias award. She is considered to be the first Islamic feminist who can effortlessly combine creativity with the shrewdest