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Muslims under new pressure to learn English

17/09/2008

London's first Muslim MP, Sadiq Khan, has called on all Muslim immigrants to the UK to be forced to learn English.

In a pamphlet for the centre-left Fabian Society, Mr Khan sets out the concessions both the government and Muslim communities should make to tackle disillusionment.

He calls on liberals to get over their anxiety about enforcing an English language requirement for immigration.

"The requirement to learn English is not colonial," he said.

"English is a passport to participation in mainstream society – jobs, education and even being able to use health services.

"Having poor English creates multiple barriers to work; it decreases your confidence, makes it harder to gain other skills and qualifications, and increases the likelihood of unemployment and of your withdrawal from the labour market."

But Mr Khan – a former human rights lawyer, chair of civil liberties group Liberty and committed opponent of the Iraq war – also specifies the changes the government must make so as to stop alienating British Muslims.

He calls on funding and training to be directed towards the English language classes and for a more inclusive foreign policy to involve different groups and approach the subject matter from a multicultural perspective.

He also wants faith discrimination to be included in the forthcoming equality bill.

Mr Khan wants British history to be made compulsory in school so that the immigrant experience forms part of every child's education.

"Nowadays, how many people – let alone schoolchildren – know that numerous Asians, including Muslims, fought and died in the first world war defending all that we stand for today? Or that 2.5 million men from the Indian Army fought in the second world war for a nation that they had never even visited?" he asks.

"They have a role in our remembrance and celebration of what this nation – what we all – stand for. Making British history compulsory in schools is not just merely about an academic subject, it is about our children understanding who they are."

The majority of his requirements are for the Muslim community itself. He urges it to approach issues of inequality with the same commitment it shows foreign policy.

"I challenge British Muslims to accept that as strongly as they feel about Iraq or counter-terror measures, poverty and inequality have the biggest impact on the lives of the majority of British Muslims," he said.

In a separate passage on the role of women in Islam, he connects women's rights with terrorism, arguing that any attempt to improve the role of women simultaneously fights extremist ideology.

"A failure to deal with the inequalities of British Muslim women flies in the face of any attempts to build a socially just and fair society. But it also has serious consequences for preventing extremism, given that the majority of the extremist and radical ideologies that lead young men to turn themselves into human bombs are also deeply misogynist."

Mr Khan, the Labour MP for Tooting, is a government whip with responsibilities for the justice department.

His voting record makes interesting reading. Despite being passionately against the Iraq war and signing an open letter to Tony Blair criticising UK foreign policy, he voted against an investigation into the war as well as supporting both ID cards and the vast majority of the government's counterterrorism legislation.

He was voted 'newcomer of the year' in the 2005 Spectator awards for parliamentarian of the year.