SOURCE: Lev, Daniel S. Review of The Veil and the Male Elite, by Fatima Mernissi. Women and Politics 12, no. 1 (1992): 79-81.

In the following review, Lev asserts that The Veil and the Male Elite is an “impressive exercise in reform exegesis,” claiming that Mernissi provides an interesting alternative interpretation of Islamic laws.

Among the ideological sources of women's disabilities everywhere none is so intractable as religious doctrine, often enough the first and last case for subjugation, evidently unassailable as the will of God. Yet the walls of this eerie fortress can be (and have been) breached by any with the skill, imagination, and courage to map the architectural foundations. It may not always work, but when it does the rewards are occasionally spectacular, as in Elaine Pagels' The Gnostic Gospels and Adam, Eve and the Serpent.

Fatima Mernissi's book [The Veil and the Male Elite] belongs in the same...