However, where does the money come from to teach communication skills to the public at large? It would suffice to transfer some of the money the cowboys invest in manufacturing arms for spies, police and soldiers, to institutes that teach communication techniques.

Fatema Mernissi was born in Fez (Morocco) in 1940. She studied Political Science and, with a scholarship from the Sorbonne, earned her doctorate from Brandeis University (USA). Mernissi is one of Arab intellectualism's most eloquent voices and a world authority on Koranic studies.

A prolific author who has been translated into several languages, her first book, "The Veil and the Male Élite: A Feminist Interpretation of Islam", is a historical study narrating the key role of the wives of Mahomet. As do all her books, "Doing Daily Battle: Interviews with Moroccan Women" (1991) - in which she interviews peasant women, women labourers, clairvoyants and maidservants - sets out to defend women. This defence is founded upon on a humanistic approach whereby women are encouraged to take up their role in society and to fight by using the power of language, the main weapon, in her view, for achieving equality and deep-seated change. She presented "Islam and Democracy: Fear of the Modern World" in Madrid in 1992, and her autobiography, "Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood", came out in 1995. Other works include "Forgotten Queens of Islam", "Scheherazade is not a Moroccan", and "Islam, Gender and Social Change", which are considered classics of contemporary literature and an intellectual benchmark by which to understand the Arab world.

Fatema Mernissi is a lecturer at the Mohamed V University of Rabat, and a research scholar at the University Institute for Scientific Research, in the same city.