The Role of Reason in Islamic Society

Fatima Marnisi has written several pioneering books considering the place of women in Islamic society. Her most famous work is Beyond the Veil, published in 1973. In this book she draws a contrast between Western oppression of women and the oppression distinctive of Islamic society. She contrasts Freudian ideas about women to sentiments found in medieval author Arrazali. Whereas Sigmund Freud saw women as essentially passive, Arrazali depicted them as active and sexually demanding. Women are also possessed of a far greater degree of self-control than men. This is not done to protect them or hide them away. To the contrary, women are veiled in order to protect the weaker sex,. namely men, who tend