UK Government to tackle extremism...by empowering Muslim women

The Government in the UK in the area where I live and nationally are to tackle Muslim extemism by funding "assertiveness course, leadership courses and english lessons" for Muslim women, in the hope that should members of their family show fundamental or extremist tendencies they can have the confidence to shop them to the police!!

see full article: here and here:

This is ridiculous as it sounds, Islam already empowers women. What makes this government think that Muslim women would need to go onto these empowerment, comnfidence building courses? With the need for people to pass citixenship tests to qualify to stay in this country, the majority of women will already be able to speak English. As for those who cannot speak English well they can easily enrol on ESOL language classes at their local college.

It seems to me they are singling out the Muslim community as needing help, with an allowance from an allocated £70 million fund (which could be better spent on the health service), the government risks alienating the rest of the surrounding communities as the criteria to enrol on these course will be Muslim and woman.

Are Non-Muslim women not in need of assertiveness courses or extra training to get jobs? I am sure they would benefit from the same? This is the same attitude of the council in Bradford who offered driver training courses for the Muslim youth to prevent them from getting into extremist groups, this alienated the non-Muslim youth as it singled out the Muslims for special treatment.This can only cause racial tension in the long run.

Organisations will be bidding for funding opportunities to run these courses, as a long running member of a voluntary organisation working with the ethnic minority in my area, I know full well that many groups exploit the women, and are only interested in funding opportunities, they will run these so called courses and tick the right boxes, but it is doubtful whether they will actually empower women and make an impact on  their lives.

Imagine your son committed a heinous crime and you knew about it, how many of you would shop him to the police?? What makes the government think that by going on these courses, the mother would then have the confidence to shop her son to the authorities if she suspected him of committing or plotting to committ a terrorist act?

What does the government consider to be "extremist ideology"? Nowadays if you openly display proudly your religious beliefs (walking down the street with a mosque hat, beard and islamic dreess) people are frightened of you, if you practice your Islam does not mean you hold extremist views. The next step would be to have religious police, like they have in some countries, which tell you which part of Islam you can and cannot practice.

One final point about Muslim women, the government has held many consultations with them in the past, and the majority of their views they have completey ignored. As a Muslim woman, the Government have failed to acknowledge that many of the Muslim women born and raised in this country are not uneducated and lacking in confidence, their upbringing in Islam has led them to become educated confident women who manage to raise a family as well as having careers as doctors, solicitors, teachers, dentists, pharmacists and scientists (to name a few). These wonderful women that I know all do this without compromosing their religion. They are the women whose voices the government chooses to ignore. If the government was to consult the Muslim community, then maybe that would be a step in the right direction to tackling extremism rather that running courses and asking the Imams to spy on their community.