Moroccan writer Fatema Mernissi was born in Fez in 1940. She studied political science at the Sorbonne and Brandeis University, where she earned her doctorate. Mernissi is a leading authority in the Arab world on Koranic studies.
Her first book, The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Islam, is a historical study of role of the wives of Mahomet.
For Doing Daily Battle: Interviews with Moroccan Women (1991), she interviewed peasant women, women labourers, clairvoyants and maidservants.
In 1995, Mernissi published an autobiography, Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood.
Other works of Mernissi include
- Islam and Democracy: Fear of the Modern World (1992)
- Forgotten Queens of Islam
- Scheherazade is not a Moroccan
- Islam, Gender and Social Change
