"The modern Muslim state has never presented itself as secular. Muslim nationalist forces, trapped by a militant and colonialist West unable to share or export its humanism, were driven to build up a rampart, to entrench themselves within the past."
Fatema Mernissi was a Moroccan sociologist and writer known for her work on gender, Islam, and social change. Her scholarship and essays influenced discussions on women"s rights in the Arab and Islamic worlds.