This book is extremely informative. I learned so much and she explains how Mernissi checked the reliability of the hadiths. This is definitely a must-read for all muslims as it explains the circumstances surrounding many of the revelations and hadiths which puts them into perspective so that one can understand them.

This book is extremely informative. I learned so much and she explains how Mernissi checked the reliability of the hadiths. This is definitely a must-read for all muslims as it explains the circumstances surrounding many of the revelations and hadiths which puts them into perspective so that one can understand them.

The central thesis of this book is relatively straightforward. That is that the original intent and context of many parts of the Qur'an and teachings of the Prophet have been manipulated by those who have an interest in making women unequal in Islam. Mernissi contents that Islam was never meant to be anything other than a religion of equality, and that one must pay attention to the context of questionable verses and hadiths that have been invoked to subjugate women.

Methodologically, this work is quite rigorous. She makes very strong arguments and appears to back them up very well. However, the very nature of any relgion is that it can be manipulated to justify two completely opposing ideas. No one can definitively make the case that their way is THE right way. Mernissi herself admits as much herself on page 128 when she says "When it is a controversial verse that is at stake, everyone is going to choose and support the opinion that suits him best among the multiplicity of those that the fiqh accumulates.

In a way, it helps her case that she can admit what is such a fundamental point. Rather than insisting that hers is the only correct interpretation, she does what she can to make her argument and she makes it well. In the end, she's arguing for equality and that women are not to be second-class citizens. This is a commendable task. While I myself do not adhere to any religion, work such as this that is positive in nature is something that everyone should embrace.

I have to reiterate: the reveiwers which condemn this book because they don't agree with it are crazy. If you buy one book on Islam, let this be it.

That said, Fatima Mernissa, a Muslim herself, has certainly left no stone unturned with her analyses of the Hadith's. This woman has done her reasearch. From explaining why it's not "un-Islamic" to check on the veritablness of a Hadith, to picking apart two Hadith's with a fine toothed comb, to explaining just why wearing a veil is not only unrequired by the Koran, but is unIslamic in itself, she covers just about everything in this book.

Having grown up in a Muslim family myself, I've obviously been subjected to the mindframe of your typical Muslim male - that women are inferior for, well, being women. It's the sole reason I renounced the religion at a young age. The rest of the females in my family remain Muslim, and with this book, I can finally explain to them just why it is that, as I had always suspected, the "words of God" have been twisted by men for their own agenda - mainly to remain the dominant gender in the Middle East.

Fatima Mernissi's careful research is fascinating and challenging. Here is a brilliant Muslim woman on a quest to separate the wheat from the chaff in her tradition. Like the great scholar Al-Bukhari, she exposes cases of fraudulence, where self-interested parties tried to impose their own prejudices as articles of faith. But at the same time Mernissi reveals an inspiring earlier version of Islam, where devotion to real partnership and equality prevails. I think Mernissi's work is at least as important as any recent writing by Christian scholars toward uncovering the historical Jesus and the original face of Christianity.

I liked it. Mernissi gives you an understanind of how hadiths work, shows you proof that Hadith may have been well contaminated with personal bias as well as cultural bias. Good overall.

I had to read this book for an anthropology class taught by an intelligent but uberfeminist professor. There's an important point in this book that sheds light on its angle: when a Muslim woman wearing a hijab and full coverings was asked how she can walk around in the heat dressed in such a manner she responds something to the effect of "it's not as hot as the fires of hell." Mernissi is not about to challenge behaviors that are dictated by Islamic scriptures. Her argument is that the veil and woman's place in the Muslim society are a result of misinterpretation of the scriptures and the hadith. This is sort of akin to Christians trying to reinterpret creation as an instructive myth after Darwin shattered the fundamentalist vision of creation. I think Mernissi's approach is generally doomed because, if tradition has failed to maintain the original spirit of a religion, a new analysis almost 1500 years after the fact is almost certainly doomed. There are too many epistemological problems with diving the original intentions behind a text that is so old. Mernissi may convince some readers that her radically new interpretation is correct but only at the cost of introducing uncertainty and mistrust in the traditions themselves. Fatally wounding relgious traditions is nearly a fatal wound to the religion itself, and will only cause apathy or fundamentalist overreaction to a challenge of the status quo.