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16 March 2026 / 27. Ramadhan 1447

#TraditionallySubmissive

#TraditionallySubmissive

After David Cameron’s controversial comments about the ‘traditional submissiveness of Muslim women’ and how he plans on tackling that, British Muslim women responded through social media. The hashtag #TraditionallySubmissive was used by many British Muslim women as they listed their accomplishments, successes, professions and hobbies. Many of these lists included knowing more than one language, including English, after the Prime Minister pledged £20m on English lessons for Muslim women living in the UK.

The idea for the Twitter storm came from one of our community members Sukaina Hirji who is an NHS GP from Watford. She, along with many others, were personally offended by the comments made by David Cameron and the purpose behind this exercise was to counteract the idea that Muslim women are oppressed.  The hashtag was trending on the evening of Sunday 24th January and there were many people taking part. Sukaina conducted an interview about this on the 27th of January for BBC Radio 5 which you can listen to here.

Many members of our community got involved in the Twitter storm and some entries from them and others can be seen below:

David Cameron is yet to respond to the backlash his comments have received. 

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