David Cameron Found Out the Hard Way That Muslim Women Are Not #TraditionallySubmissive

@David_Cameron I speak 4 languages,how many do you speak? #TraditionallySubmissive pic.twitter.com/tfX9EIvgEI

— Aasiya Versi (@mamanabeelah) January 24, 2016

I am intelligent, articulate, opinionated, capable, adaptable & I can even make a decent souffle. What I am NOT is #TraditionallySubmissive

— safina najeeb (@frazzledmumsaf) January 24, 2016

Submissive is most definitely not the word I’d choose @David_Cameron. #TraditionallySubmissive pic.twitter.com/DptxsiVF6Z

— Zaynab (@zay_nab110) January 24, 2016

Muslim women are not a problem that needs solving. #TraditionallySubmissive @David_Cameron pic.twitter.com/6IcG3cZSth

— Fiza Azlam (@FizaAzlam) January 24, 2016

My mum’s response to @David_Cameron… #TraditionallySubmissive pic.twitter.com/nxrKEfAMqQ

— Salim Kassam (@msalimkassam) January 24, 2016

These Muslim women want @David_Cameron to know they’re not timid https://t.co/9e9aE0hMvM #TraditionallySubmissive pic.twitter.com/T6r0ZPcLWE

— BBC Trending (@BBCtrending) January 25, 2016

my mom was so #TraditionallySubmissive she left home to go to med school in 1960s Pakistan. thanks to her, i’m a journalist and a professor.

— Asmaa Malik (@asmaam) January 24, 2016

Shelina Janmohamed, the activist author of “Love in a Headscarf,” launched the social media campaign after reading Cameron’s remarks, first reported by The Telegraph last week, that the “traditional submissiveness of Muslim women” prevented them from acting as moderating influences on young Muslim men who might become radicalized.

“My heart just sank when I saw the headlines,” Janmohamed told the BBC.

“It’s just making things harder for Muslim women. That’s just one stereotype about Muslim women, it’s not how we all are. 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.”

It wasn’t just Cameron’s remarks about submissiveness that riled these highly educated and capable Muslim women.

It was also his plan to spend 20 million pounds helping 190,000 Muslim women improve their English language skills so they could better integrate into British society and avoid what his office’s press release called “a slide towards radicalization and extremism.”

“We will now say if you don’t improve your fluency, that could affect your ability to stay in the UK,” Cameron said.

“All too often, because of what I would call ‘passive tolerance,’ people subscribe to the flawed idea of separate development. It is time to change our approach. We will never truly build One Nation unless we are more assertive about our liberal values, more clear about the expectations we place on those who come to live here and build our country together and more creative and generous in the work we do to break down barriers.”

Perhaps the money would be better spent teaching Cameron and his advisers about British Muslim women in the 21st century.

The findings of a recent study of Muslim women in Britain “squarely challenges prevalent images of women from Muslim communities as passive, subdued and subordinated through evidence of their autonomisation and capacity of action,” said Daniele Joly, a professor emeritus in the Department of Sociology at the University of Warwick and author of the study “Women from Muslim Communities: Autonomy and Capacity of Action” published by British journal Sociology this month.

While women interviewed for the study had experienced discrimination, they also emphasized “the support they had enjoyed from British society” and “all agreed that the situation had much improved over the last 20 years,” wrote Joly.

Muslim “women’s aspirations themselves had changed as a consequence of living in Britain because their horizon had expanded beyond marriage and family … They generally recognized that living in British society granted them greater opportunities as women.”

It might be time for Cameron to get to know some of these women.

By Allison Jackson, GlobalPost
This article is syndicated from GlobalPost.