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By Ali Shariati
Type: Women, Personalities
Fatima is Fatima written about Fatima Zahra, the daughter of prophet Mohammad, describing her as
a role model for Muslim women around the world. It has been written in the pre-revolutionary
era of Iran's history where there were no specific sources by which one might interpret who
she was, and Shariati assures the readers that he is giving them more than an analytical
description of her personality and that it needs the criticism of the enlightened thinker.
He describes Fatima as a manifestation and a symbol of the way and an essential direction
of 'Islamic thought'. He states that even in the ever changing world in which people's views
towards life constantly change, as a role model Fatima can still be looked up to by women
at any time or place.
“We are Muslims, women of a society, who wish to make decisions through
reason and choice and to relate them to a history, religion and society which
received its spirit and basis from Islam. A woman in this society wants to be
herself. She wants to build herself, 'herself'. She wants to be reborn. In this re-birth,
she wants to be her own midwife. She neither wants to be a product of her ethnic heritage
nor to adopt a superficial facade. She cannot remain heedless of Islam, and she cannot
remain indifferent to it.”
- Ali Shariati
“Every year, hundreds of thousands of Muslims cry for her. There are hundreds of
thousands of gatherings, prayer meetings, festivals and mourning ceremonies in her
memory. There are ceremonies of praise, joy, honor and majesty for her in which her
generosity is remembered through unusual customs. They hold rituals of lamentation
where they re-create her sorrows and speak ill of and damn those who offended her.
In spite of all of this, her real personality is not known.”
- Ali Shariati
Available online at http://al-islam.org/fatimaisfatima/
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Available through SIA.
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Society for Islamic Awareness 