Fatima.Mernessi_The-Forgotten-Queens-of-Islam-EN

176 The Arab Queens
ritual and order was re-established in the palace and the city, Sitt
al-Mulk could undertake a task that was becoming ever more urgent:
getting rid of Ibn Daws, who knew her secret and had the power
to blackmail her. She thought up a strategem that would produce
a death in public. She sent some guards to a meeting of viziers and
notables, and they pointed to Ibn Daws and accused him of having
killed 'our master the caliph' and then killed him right there in the
meeting. Once the palace was cleaned out and the regency officially
organized, Sitt al-Mulk chose some competent ministers and settled
down for four years to putting the economy in order and calming
the population. She succeeded on both counts.
This was a unique case. Exceptional circumstances had brought on
a power vacancy during the first months of unrest following the
disappearance of the caliph. During this time a woman had carried
out virtually all the functions of caliph and had directed the affairs
of the empire as regent. Nevertheless, the important lesson to be
learned is that this Fatimid queen never dared to ask that the khutba
be said in her name. Although she must certainly have dreamed of
it, Sitt al-Mulk, practised observer of the caliphal scene that she
was, knew better than anyone the law of the harem that marked its
inhabitants forever - the law of the veil. Her story also confirms to
us that, on the question of women, Shi'ites and Sunnis are in
agreement: the access of women to the greater imamate, to the
leadership of the state, is an event that is accompanied by disorder
and is the expression of it. Women do not have the same political
rights as men. Because of their very essence, they must be strangers
to politics.
This is further confirmation that the case of the Yemeni queens
was due not to the Shi'ite variable but to regional cultural factors.
The logic of belonging to the harem imposes the mask, the veil, for
all those who violate the hudud, who go beyond the limits and find
themselves on the other side, on the caliphal scene. The veil relates
to theatre and ritual, and in that way it is more troubling than
absence and death. Whatever you may say about absence or death,
it is existence that is important. The dead and the absent do not
exist - although in varying degrees, it is true. But what is involved
in the ritual of the veil is the annihilation of the free will of beings
who are physically present, of women who are here and who look
at you with wide-open, alert eyes. It was not the presence of Sitt
al-Mulk on the throne of Egypt that was disturbing. It was rather