Source: The Telegraph
The Prime Minister has reignited public debate over the integration of British Muslims by raising the contentious issues of gender segregation, face veils, and fluency in English – all framed as problematic barriers to community cohesion.
The announcement certainly buttresses the image of the PM as taking a tough line on Muslim integration. But the reality is there is in fact very little in today’s address which wasn’t already happening. Public institutions including schools and hospitals have already been issuing recommendations to staff on the non-wearing of face veils, particularly in cases of face to face contact with patients or pupils. The removal of face veils at borders is not only standard, but mandatory as part of identification. And while local councils have previously held meetings segregated according to gender, this is a very marginal issue, hardly worthy of a national debate and certainly unconnected to the struggle against terrorism, which these measures are avowedly meant to be addressing.
The issue of learning English for new migrants, on the other hand, has long been a concern for campaigners. (Most Muslim women in the UK are not migrants, but never mind.) They point out that the latest measures will criminalise women, rather than assisting them, when in fact, massive cuts to local government funding has led to the closure of many of the very types of services designed to help migrant women learn English.
A case in point is this report from Eaves, a front line women’s charity which, until being forced to shut down recently, ran shelters for domestic violence victims. Contrary to stereotypes, they found that large proportions of migrant women on spousal visas are highly educated, often with impressive employment histories – but that Britain’s professed agenda of encouraging integration actually conflicts with the regulations in place. That is: these women are keen to work and to learn or improve their English, but policy prevents them from doing so.
For instance, the report listed huge hurdles to English lessons, with either no free courses or free courses only available to those who could access public funds – which, as spouses on five years’ visa probation, these women could not.
The PM emphasised the dangers of segregation and isolation, issues with which Muslims are certainly familiar. Not because a small number of Muslims may struggle to speak English, but rather because 46 per cent of Muslims live in the most deprived 10 per cent of the country. Any government serious about isolation should start by addressing this disproportionate social deprivation.
And now, on top of all this, Cameron wants to actually deepen the precarity of migrant women’s status, creating the conditions for mothers to be taken away from their children if their fail an English language test.
These are the policies of an isolated elite, ignorant of the actual problems faced by people in the real world yet bewitched by a phantasmagorical reimagining of themselves as purveyors of an egalitarian, feminist agenda. How would potentially taking away his mother from a vulnerable child help solve the issue of extremism? How exactly is this likely to ingratiate said vulnerable child to “western culture” – or, as I like to call it, his own country – if he is said to be struggling with its values?
The answer, obviously, is that it won’t. You don’t assist marginalised women by criminalising them.
But to call Cameron’s reasoning ill-judged is to misread its intent. These announcements do speak to the audience they are actually aimed at, and that is not vulnerable Muslim women, but the anti-immigrant voices baying for political blood.