SOURCE: Tétreault, Mary Ann. “The Family Romance of Islam.” Middle East Journal 48, no. 2 (spring 1994): 357-62.

In the following essay, Tétreault draws upon the psychoanalytic notion of “family romance” to elucidate Mernissi's analysis of Islamic culture, political organization, and women's oppression in Islam and Democracy.

Islam and Democracy is an artfully forged argument for the necessity of nations in the Middle East to introduce democratic processes and the readiness of their peoples to participate. It is also an analysis of why governments and religious elites in Middle Eastern states are so opposed to democratization, and how they ally themselves with elites in the developed world to prevent political reform. Even more than in her previous books, which address the problems of realizing human freedom in modern Islamic societies,¹ Fatima Mernissi relies in this work on the literary techniques of poets and prophets. Parables and emblematic events run...