SOURCE: Halsell, Grace. Review of The Forgotten Queens of Islam, by Fatima Mernissi. Middle East Policy 2, no. 3 (1993): 180-82.

In the following review, Halsell praises Mernissi's examination of the lives and reigns of numerous Islamic women governors, sultanas, and rulers from 1000-1800 A.D. in The Forgotten Queens of Islam, and notes Mernissi's distinction between “political Islamic history” and what she terms Risala Islam—or the true Islam of the Quran.

When Benazir Bhutto first became prime minister of Pakistan after winning the elections of 1988, all who monopolized the right to speak in the name of Islam raised the cry of blasphemy. Invoking Islamic tradition, they decried this event as “against nature.” Political decision-making among their ancestors, they said, was always a men's affair. Those who claimed to speak for Islam alleged that no woman had ever governed a Muslim state between 622 and 1988, and thus, Benazir Bhutto could not...