In The woman in the Muslim unconscious, essay published in 1982 under the pseudonym of Fatna Aît Sabbah, the essayist reserved a chapter to the question of Sufi love, love poetry and courteous religious literature in the Arab cultural heritage. She paints the portrait of the ideal of love and the mystical conception of love among the Muslim Sufis whom she sets up as a model of true love, such as Ibn Arabi or Al Hallaj.
However, she does not omit to recall the disastrous fate of certain representatives of this amorous Islam marginalized in favor of a more rigorous version of religion. The vision of Sufi love is defined as an eternal quest for God-Love, beyond all distinctions between human and divine, masculine or feminine which are offered to us as alternatives to explore: “To love a creature in which beauty manifests itself, be it a nightingale that sings, a flower that receives a drop of dew, or a woman that smiles at you, is to love God in his many forms”, says Ibn Arabi, whose spirituality is based on monism. The outline of the reflections sketched out by the essayist will be developed in a book published a few years later under the title of Love in Muslim Countries.
Of love in the land of Islam
First published in a first version by Jeune Afrique Plus in 1984, Love in Muslim Countries will be published by Albin Michel in 1986. The work also retains a predominance of a rather journalistic style in its large parts. This is “ a bouquet of reflection says Mernissi in the introduction, as if to evacuate any academic or scholarly pretensions. She revisits again the place of love in Muslim culture, notably through Ibn Hazm’s Collar of the Dove, and wonders “Why has this aspect of Islam become so foreign? Why love has become a ridiculous act these days, a specialty of teenagers? What have we done with the memory of the loving prophet? Why is it so absent from our banal, daily, routine exchanges ?”.
This desire to question this universal feeling in a society overwhelmed by “Western commercials”, whose avatars would be the social networks today, draws the contours of his thought in the light of traditions and the past. A series of questions punctuates this essay on love broken down into segments: seduction, beauty, marriage and the couple, the vision of imams, cadis, philosophers and historians. One might ask why love? It is because it is a place, a field of political, economic and social issues which generate relations of domination, force and submission.
Mernissi’s interest in this question is also concomitant with her feminist struggles, as if the fight for equality went through a revaluation of love: the feeling of love would be the antidote to machismo or the ambient violence of physical or symbolic order exerted on others. This idea will be a constant in its vision built on the principle of dialogue in relations between men and women. The “love” conversation sets itself up as a bridge to connect cultures, bring hearts closer and abolish borders.
Textually, the dialogue remains constant between references from the West and the East, allowing encounters: Who said West and East never meet? Well, love at least insofar as it turns out to be impossible, works miracles. Who is more like the Westerners Tristan and Iseult than the Easterners Urwa and his beloved Arfa? », notes the writer. His regret? The ignorance of our adolescents of our cultural heritage relating to love, which would be due to “a retroactive anthropological process” modern mass media that would digest our past in their own way. She thus formulates virulent criticisms against this image of modern love as promoted in Hollywood and other successful films. And dons her feminist garb to denounce the feminine ideal instituted by the media.
In the mind of the essayist, the portrait of the ideal woman would reveal her situation, her perception and her representation in the minds of men (or women for that matter). The reflection on love is absolutely not disconnected from the reality of women and as a result of a discourse of the fight against disparities and inequalities between men and women. Fatéma Mernissi often resorts to history and heritage to show all the social dynamics that existed in the glorious days of Islamic civilization, emerging there from the shadow of figures of independence, autonomy, feminine freedom, in short: from a heritage which can inspire a youth subjugated by the dominant West.
Love, child’s play?
How do you go from a society that sang of love to a society that represses it, fights it and infantilization ? The sociologist believes that her generation (economists, politicians, intellectuals) who were supposed to “transform” society failed in this enterprise. And to add: “There was no revolution in mentalities. Our generation has not created viable alternatives. This malaise of the couple reflects and accompanies the economic and political malaise. Only, it is undoubtedly more painful: because it is lived, as an intimate experience, not as a general public problem, but as a personal failure.the advantage of this admission of a triple failure is to reveal that reflection on love goes hand in hand with economic and political questions and is not a game for romantic and dreamy adolescents.
The analysis of feelings of love should not be relegated to second place, pending the development of other areas that would be priorities for Muslim countries. This is a central question, which must be posed, analyzed and deciphered in conjunction, simultaneously with other societal problems. Anyone who would take this aspect lightly would be blind and ignorant of a reality that must be taken into account and assumed: thinking about love is not a hobby for idle minds.