Scheherazade Goes West by Fatima
Mernissi
The Feminist Romantic
Fatima Mernissis unclassifiable book, at turns scholarly, playful, watchful,
and admonitory, perfectly juxtaposes the relations between men and
women in Europe with those in the Muslim world. In Scheherazade Goes
West: Different Cultures, Different Harems, there is a studied casualness
in Mernissis observations, which she presents as a series of discoveries
reached through conversations with friends, through reading and travels,
and through her own lived experience as a liberated Moroccan woman, a
feminist professor of sociology at a Moroccan university. In 1994, Mernissi
traveled to 10 Western cities to promote her bestselling book, Dreams of
Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood, a luxury not available to her illiterate
grandmother Yasmina, to whom the harem was a prison, rather than the
idealized sanctuary of Western myth. The contrasts Mernissi discovered
between East and West were not as simple as one might imagine. In
Berlin, for example, she leafed through pornographic German photo books
of harem women, produced for an eager audience of Western men, and in
Paris, she accompanied a male friend on a walking tour of his favorite

odalisques, from Ingres to Matisse, while he explained how comforting an
insecure man found these nude, silent women. While the medieval caliphs
tended to prize intelligence and erudition among the women of their
harems, Western writers have lauded beauty over every other quality; as
Kant put it, a learned woman might as well even have a beard. In
deceptively light prose, Mernissi introduces the sexual politics of Islam to a
Western audience, while pointing out the inconsistencies and illogic in the
Western tradition. --Regina Marler
Personal Review: Scheherazade Goes West by Fatima Mernissi
Fatema Mernissi's "Scheherezade Goes West" is an incredible book. I
could not put it down once I began reading it. I highly recommend it......I
keep talking about it to everyone I know.
I think that her observations have quite a bit of truth behind them, even
with regards to her ideas of the Western world. A few critics of the book
mentioned how if Fatema had truly observed women in the U.S. she would
see that we came in all sizes. That is true! But still, don't we all feel the
pressure put on us to be a size 6? To wear makeup? To look like a
supermodel? Why are eating disorders more prevalent? A friend of mine
told me she was anorexic in high school, but that having an eating disorder
was "normal", since it appeared almost every girl in her high school had
some sort of eating disorder. How sad! In high school I took sanctuary in
athletics---and most athletic women could never fit into the American
standard ideals of beauty. So we pride ourselves in being fit and strong.
When are we going to learn to appreciate ourselves for what we are
worth?
Mernissi's book is one that makes you think. I think it is magnificent. Read
it with an open mind, and use her observations to challenge and question
what you know. I also enjoyed having some sort of insight into the Islamic
world. I feel we really misunderstand Islam. We base most of our views on
the actions and beliefs of the extremists. I hope that because of the events
in our world today, us westerners and non-muslims will try to educated
ourselves and learn about Islam with an open mind and an un-biased
heart.
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