Last week, Prime Minister David Cameron announced plans to spend £20m on providing English lessons in homes and schools for women in migrant communities. The government’s plans come following concerns about the 22% of Muslim women who speak no English at all. According to Cameron, enabling Muslim women to speak English should make them feel less isolated in Britain.
He also has ideas for a separate scheme in which those on a five-year spousal visa would have to pass a language test in order to stay in the country. Hmmm… totally combating isolation there, Dave.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, the PM said: ‘I’m not saying there’s some sort of causal connection between not speaking English and becoming an extremist. If you’re not able to speak English, you’re not able to integrate, you may find, therefore, that you have challenges understanding what your identity is and you could be more susceptible to the extremist message that comes from Daesh (so-called Islamic State).’
But what really got people’s backs up, was last week’s Telegraph reportwhich claimed that David Cameron had privately suggested that young men are vulnerable to radicalisation because some Muslim women are ‘traditionally submissive’.
Enter, the internet
Over the weekend, tweets began to crop up of Muslim women posing with signs listing their (multiple) awesome achievements, along with the hashtag #TraditionallySubmissive. From PhDs, to masters of five languages, to scuba divers – their collective CVs are enough to make us feel a bit bad about our own paltry achievements.
The empowering hashtag was created by author Shelina Janmohamed, in a bid to argue against the claim that Muslim women are ‘submissive’. It only took a few hours for more than 33,000 people to get involved, including the ever-incredible Nadiya Hussain, of GBBO glory.
‘That’s just one stereotype about Muslim women, it’s not how we all are,’ Ms Janmohamed told the BBC.
‘We are vibrant, diverse, we’re talented and we have opinions. The prime minister is always saying we need to take up British values, so I responded in the most British way I could – with sarcasm.’
Check out the best from the nation’s ‘traditionally submissive’ women. Stick that in your pipe, Dave.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.