Following a brief description and reflection on personal impact of Fatima Mernissi on myself as a scholar and women’s/human rights activist, I will discuss how Mernissi’s work have been received in Iran, particularly by Iranian feminists. One of her books The Veil and the Male Elite: A Feminist Interpretation of Women’s Rights in Islam, was translated from English into Persian for the first time by Malihe Maghazei and published by Nay Publications in 2001. The first edition was well received and all 3000 copies sold out in couple of months. Almost half of the copies of the second edition was sold before being banned and the remaining copies getting confiscated by the order of the then Prosecutor General of Tehran, Saeed Mortazavi in May 2002. The manager of the publishing company was arrested temporarily and interrogated. The translator was persecuted and sentenced to 18 months imprisonment. She appealed and hired a lawyer and paid a huge fine in order to turn the verdict into three months in jail and the remaining 15 months as suspended. Ironically, all this drew more attention to the book, especially among Iranian feminists. Reportedly 200,000 underground copies were sold with higher price. In my paper, I will explain the significance and relevance of Mernissi’s work to Iranian feminists, including her stress on understanding the historical and political factors in construction of Islamic tradition rather than the scripture, and her analysis of socio-political, cultural and socio-psychological factors behind the tension and fear of many members of the Muslim male elite of democracy and modern world rather than Islamic faith per se. I will try to show how Mernissi is understood by major ideological tendencies within Iranian women’s movement, what has been her influence on rethinking feminist approach to religion and the debates over “secular feminism” versus “Islamic feminism.” What has been Mernissi’s contribution to the construction of self-identity as “Muslim feminist” and what have we learned or can learn from Mernissi about the inter-connection between feminism and democracy.