SOURCE: Hillenbrand, Carole. Review of The Forgotten Queens of Islam, by Fatima Mernissi. History 82, no. 267 (July 1997): 463-64.

In the following review, Hillenbrand commends Mernissi's passionate denunciation of Muslim misogyny in The Forgotten Queens of Islam, but asserts that the arguments are undermined by factual errors and abrasive rhetoric.

Fatima Mernissi is one of the best-known female intellectuals in the Arab world. This book [The Forgotten Queens of Islam] arose in response to the claims made in some circles in Pakistan when Benazir Bhutto became prime minister that ‘no Muslim state has ever been governed by a woman’. Mernissi argues that this is patently false and provides proof in the form of the biographies of fifteen ‘queens’ who ruled in various Muslim states, in India, Egypt, Iran, the Maldives, Indonesia and Yemen. The wide range of time and space here forces Mernissi to rely on the work of other...