"...the doctrine of a life-to-come is not such an uplifting idea after all because it necessarily devalues life on earth...
... why we sometimes remind ourselves that 'life is short.'  It is an impetus to extend a gesture of affection to a loved one, to bury the hatchet in a pointless dispute, to use time productively rather than squander it. ... nothing gives life more purpose than the realization that every moment of consciousness is a precious and fragile gift."

From "The Mystery of Consciousness" by Steven Pinker
TIME, Jan 29, 2007

 

The hijab is manna from heaven for politicians facing crises.  It is not just a scrap of cloth; it is a division of labor.  It sends women back to the kitchen.  Any Muslim state can reduce its level of unemployment by half just by appealing to the shari‘a, in its meaning as despotic caliphal tradition.  This is why it is important to avoid reducing fundamentalism to a handful of agitators who stage demonstrations in the streets.  It must be situated within its regional and world economic context by linking it to the question of oil wealth and the New World Order that the Westerners propose to us. (p. 165)
…our Prophet, who spent most of his time before the age of forty meditating on power and how to obtain it.(p. 139)

... Saudi Arabia, the most conservative regime in the Arab world and the one most contemptuous of human rights, emerged not only stronger but also more than ever the determining power for our future.  Two-thirds of the world’s oil reserves still sleep quietly beneath the soil of Mecca.  It is normal that millions of unemployed Arabs dream of a more favorable distribution of this wealth as a solution to their problems.  …Saudi Arabia has inundated these millions of unemployed with Islamic propaganda…

The role of oil in fundamentalism should never be forgotten.  The resistance to progressive ideas, financed in large measure by the Saudi oil money that was simultaneously producing and extravagant, pricely Islamic culture, gave birth to a rigid authoritarianism…A better term for the fundamentalism in Saudi Arabia would be petro-Wahhabism, whose pillar is the veiled woman. (p. 165)

Emphasis added by MDA

From:   Islam and democracy:  Fear of the modern world , 1992, by Fatima Mernissi
More on Islam (books):  

 

More from Fatima Mernisi:
Islam: Faith and History, Mahmoud M. Ayoub, 2004

Islam: Religion, History, and Civilization, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, 2003

The heart of Islam: Enduring Values for humanity, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, 2002

Answering only to God: Faith and freedom in twenty-first-century Iran, Geneive Abdo and Jonathan Lions, 2003

No God but God: Egypt and the triumph of Islam, Geneive Abdo, 2000 

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A memoir in Books, Azar Nafisi, 2004

In the eye of the storm: Women in Post-revolutionary Iran, Ed. Mahnaz Afkhami and Erika Friedl, 1994 

The Trouble with Islam:  A Muslim's Call For Reform In Her Faith, Irshad Manji, 2003

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Beyond the veil:  Male-female dynamics in modern Muslim society, 1987

The veil and the male elite:  a feminist interpretation of women's rights in Islam, 1991

Dreams of trespass: Tales of a harem girlhood, 1994

Scheherazade goes West: different cultures, different harems, 2001