Mernissi’s first monograph,
Beyond the Veil, was published in 1975. A revised edition was published in Britain in 1985 and in the US in 1987.
Beyond the Veil has become a classic, especially in the fields of anthropology and sociology on women in the Arab World, the Mediterranean area or Muslim societies in general. Her most famous book, as an Islamic feminist,
The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Islam, is a quasi-historical study of role of the wives of Muhammad. It was first published in French in 1987, and translated into English in 1991. For
Doing Daily Battle: Interviews with Moroccan Women (1991), she interviewed peasant women, women labourers, clairvoyants and maidservants. In 1995, Mernissi published a memoir,
Tales of a Harem Girlhood.
Other works of Mernissi include :
- Islam and Democracy: Fear of the Modern World (1992)
- Forgotten Queens of Islam
- Scheherazade goes West
- Islam, Gender and Social Change
- Women's rebellion & Islamic memory (Atlantic Highlands, N.J. : Zed Books, 1996.)