I wonder what David Cameron has made of all the Muslim women speaking out in opposition to his major announcement earlier this week that he is going to be funding English classes for Muslim women in Britain, so that we can avoid a risk of extremism.
Like many discussions about Muslim women, he’s fallen victim to the same lazy thinking that accepts without reflection or analysis that Muslim women are just one type. Instead, any right-minded human being with a questioning mind and a curiosity to know facts would ask themselves, who exactly are Muslim women?
Mr Cameron is not alone in this wilful blindness. Muslim women suffer from portrayals of homogeneity from all sides. Just witness the fact that almost every single photograph accompanying Mr Cameron’s announcement has depicted a woman wearing a niqab. That is our problem writ large: the portrayal of what Muslim women are like is repetitive, identikit and most importantly, factually incorrect.
He’s trotted out a number of memes: that we’re “traditionally submissive”, that we are locked at home, that we can’t speak English, that we isolate ourselves.
Except that for most Muslim women, we’re none of these things. There are 1.3 million Muslim women in the UK, and around 800 million worldwide. These outdated and unsubstantiated ideas do not apply to all of them, they probably don’t even apply to most of them. Yes, of course there are some who face these problems, but gender inequality and oppression are sadly not unique to Muslims.
We see Muslim women operating at the very highest levels whether they be ministers, businesswomen, artists, popstars, sportswomen, Nobel Prize winners, maths experts, the list goes on. When Muslim women’s achievements make the news, it’s not because they are outliers as Muslim women, but because they are outliers at the top level because all women are breaking the glass ceiling. And because we accept at face value these kind of nonsense descriptions of Muslim women that fail to recognise diversity, aspiration, culture, class and so on.
Creating a one-size-fits-all description of a huge group of people is a form of oppression in itself. Worse, it is both futile and dangerous to fling around theories and descriptions that are simply not true. For example, his theory is that these supposed qualities of Muslim women are somehow connected to extremism. But there is no evidence of this. So it’s a waste of resources to invest because the goal will never be met. Of course, investing per se in marginalised groups is always a good thing. But this is where his parroting of the oppressed Muslim woman trope as the frame to investment is so dangerous – it reinforces the description of Muslim women as a breeding ground for extremism. And the result of this is hatred of Muslim women, and ultimately further oppression and assault.
Which brings us back to the important question that needs real answers: what are the experiences, needs and challenges facing this huge population of Muslim women and that huge variation within it?
Facts from actual research, is required. And the anecdotal evidence already exists from Muslim women who are constantly speaking up. We’ve got opinions and we are going to be voicing them. Be ready to have your ignorance vanquished.
Shelina Zahra Janmohamed is the author of Love in a Headscarf and blogs at www. spirit21.co.uk
