SOURCE: Power, Carla. “Unveiled.” New Statesman and Society 6, no. 264 (6 August 1993): 40-1.

In the following review, Power praises the quality of research in The Forgotten Queens of Islam, stating that the book serves as a manifesto for the Islamic world in the 1990s.

Islam's treatment of women is an easy target for western outrage. Rather like Messrs Bush and Clinton before they bombed Baghdad, we can convince ourselves we have the tools and the clarity of vision to condemn. More resonant than critiques from a western viewpoint, however, are the writings of the Moroccan sociologist Fatima Mernissi.

Mernissi trained at Koranic schools as well as western universities, and her work draws on traditional Islamic sources and methodology to come to feminist conclusions. She argues less for a break with Islamic tradition than for an uncovering of it. In Women and Islam, Mernissi used key religious texts to show that...