A £20m fund to help
more Muslim women in the UK learn English will make them better able to
resist the lure of radicalisation, David Cameron has said.
While
there was no "causal connection" between poor English and extremism,
language lessons would make communities "more resilient", the PM said.They would also help tackle the discrimination and segregation experienced by Muslim women, he added.
Some Muslims have accused him of wrongly "conflating" the two issues.
The government says 22% of Muslim women in England speak little or no English.
Launching a range of new measures, the prime minister said "more assertive" action was needed to tackle discrimination against Muslim women and their isolation in some UK communities.
As well as focusing on English language, he also announced a review of the role of Britain's religious councils, including Sharia courts, in an effort to confront men who exert "damaging control over their wives, sisters and daughters".
Segregation, he argued, was allowing "appalling practices" such as female genital mutilation and forced marriage to exist, and increasing vulnerability to recruitment by so-called Islamic State - also known as Daesch.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme, Mr Cameron said the push on language was "about building a more integrated, cohesive, one nation country where there's genuine opportunity for people".
"I think in the past people have thought that the progressive thing to do was to allow people to come to our country and leave them to develop separately in their own ways. I think that is completely wrong."
He said some "menfolk" in Muslim communities were fostering segregation by preventing women from learning English or leaving home alone, adding: "It's holding people back, it's not in tune with British values and it needs to go."
Mr Cameron said there was "a connection with combating extremism" and improving English was important "if we're going to try to help people become more resilient against the messages of Daesch".
"I'm not saying there's some sort of causal connection between not speaking English and becoming an extremist - of course not, that would be a ridiculous thing to say," he continued.
"But if you're not able to speak English, you're not able to integrate, you may find, therefore, that you have challenges understanding what your identity is and you could be more susceptible to the extremist message that comes from Daesch."
BBC political correspondent Ross Hawkins says the government's counter-extremism strategy has previously been criticised by the Muslim Council of Britain as being based on fuzzy conceptions of British values.
Dal Babu, a former chief superintendent with the Metropolitan Police who now works with families whose children have gone to fight with IS, told Today the investment in language lessons was welcome.
But he added: "My concern is how we have conflated the issue of learning English with stopping radicalism and extremism... to conflate the two is unhelpful."
Mr Babu also said he did not recognise the figure of 22% as the proportion of Muslim women without good English - instead quoting a figure of 6%, cited by racial equality think tank the Runnymede Trust.
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