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

The Caliph and the Queen 31
that gender and politics are so closely tied that it is absolutely
impossible to separate them, especially in cultures where man/-
woman subordination incarnates and symbolizes authority. Societies
that have defined the identity of a man by his virile ability to control
and veil women do not seem ready to relinquish such a definition
of self, nor are they ready to enjoy democracy. Any infiltration of
women into the Muslim political arena is seen as disruptive; the
credibility of all the protagonists, especially the most pompous,
seems to suffer grievously. And this unfolds on time's double stage:
that of the present and that of the past, with memory playing the
role of an artfully distorting mirror, creating a present which cannot
be supported by any other logic. In this regard, the general outcry
against Benazir Bhutto and her strangely brief career is more than
eloquent.
What is the origin of this conflict between politics and women?
The simplest way to probe the philosophical bases of the conflict is
to go back again to the key concept of the caliph. This title has
always been, and is still today, very rarely claimed, despite the
many nation-states and the sovereign autonomy of each ruler. The
coldness of the mullahs of Teheran, who claim to be the spiritual
leaders of the universe, toward the king of Morocco is due, among
other things, to the fact that he is one of the rare heads of a modern
Muslim state to bear the title of caliph. And to make it worse for
them, the kings of Morocco have inherited this title for centuries.
Moreover, at a very early stage Morocco was one of the first regions
of the Muslim empire to set up autonomous institutions and assert
its claim to be an independent Muslim territory which did not
accept just any claimant to spiritual authority. The sovereigns of the
Almoravid dynasty (488/1056 to 541/1147) adopted the title of Amir
al-Muslimin (Commander of the Muslims) to make known their
desire for autonomy without going as far as repudiating the authority
of the Abbasid caliph, who alone had the title of Amir al-mu'minin
(Commander of the faithful). The example of the rivalry between
Teheran and Rabat allows us to understand the permanence, the
continuity, and the gravity of the symbolism of titles and their
importance on the Islamic political scene and the ever-powerful
import (today essentially spiritual) of the word caliph.
Although the caliph is always an imam, an imam is not necessarily
caliph. One can very well dispense with the word imam when in
the presence of the caliph, for he is both. An imam is he who
positions people in space, while the caliph positions them in time.
The grammatical origin of the word imam is 'amma, to be the first,