Quotes by Fatema Mernissi

“Nature is woman's best friend,' she [Yasmina] often said. 'If you're having troubles, you just swim in the water, stretch out in a field, or look up at the stars. That's how a woman cures her fears'.”

“There are many ways to be beautiful. Fighting, swearing, and ignoring tradition could make a women irresistible.”

“When you are in trouble, you need to put all your energies into thinking that there is a way out. Then, the bottom, the dark hole, becomes just a springboard from which you can leap so high that yo...”

“But when your situation is hopeless, all you can do is turn the world upside down, transform it according to your wishes, and create anew.”

“A human being was connected to the world through his or her skin and how could someone with clogged pores feel the environment or be sensitive to its vibrations?”

“Happiness, she would explain, was when a person felt good, light, creative, content, loving and loved, and free. An unhappy person felt as if there were barriers crushing her desires and the talent...”

“But Aunt Habiba said not to worry, that everyone had wonderful things hidden inside. The only difference was that some managed to share those wonderful things, and others did not. Those who did not...”

“Educated women armed with computers have defeated extremists by denying them a monopoly to define cultural identity and interpret religious texts. No extremist can say that women are inferior to me...”

“In Islamic societies, politicians can manipulate almost everything. But thus far, no fundamentalist leader has been able to convince his supporters to renounce Islam's central virtue - the principl...”

“The waves of religion based on terrorism in the 1990s are based on the tormented response of a mutilated Muslim society whose progressive forces have been savagely emasculated. Why on earth is the ...”

“The woman with dark hair, wide hips, and a few extra pounds has always been the essence of beauty in Morocco.”

“Dignity is to have a dream, a strong one, which gives you a vision, a world where you have a place, where whatever it is you have to contribute makes a difference.”

“Happiness was when there was a balance between what you gave and what you took”

“Pessimism is the luxury of the powerful.”

“Being frozen into the passive position of an object whose very existence depends on the eye of its beholder turn the educated modern Western women into a harem slave.”

“Beauty is in the skin!”

“She would take him to faraway lands to observe foreign ways, so he could get closer to the strangeness within himself.”

“I asked Mina how would I know on which side I stood. Her answer was quick, short, and very clear - If you can't get out, you are on the powerless side.”

“But since then, looking for the frontier has become my life’s occupation. Anxiety eats at me whenever I cannot situate the geometric line organizing my powerlessness.”

“But it was the radio incident that taught me an important lesson. It was then that Mother told me about the need to chew my words before letting them out. ‘Turn each word around your tongue seven t...”