NI Muslim figure '˜really surprised' by Cameron's English language policy

Anwar Mady was reacting to the Prime Minister’s proposal to spend £20m on a project aimed at improving the English of UK Muslim women – with one possibility being that those who do not make the grade may lose the right to stay in the country (see panel to the right).

Whilst Mr Mady denied there is any major difference in the language skills of Northern Ireland-based Muslim men and women, UKIP MLA David McNarry said he doubts women are treated with equal standing among members of the Province’s Muslim community – and condemned the level of spending involved.

Mr Mady has lived in Belfast for the last 10 years, and used to be the imam (the Muslim equivalent of a minister) at the Islamic Centre.

Today, the 42-year-old is its project co-ordinator, although he still occasionally takes prayers on a Friday (that being akin to the Muslim Sabbath).

Worshippers come from across Africa and Asia, and he said the main language spoken among them is English – with religious services mostly in English too.

He said: “Islam generally urges education, demanding every Muslim, every believing Muslim – men or women – go and seek education in the land, anywhere in the world.”

He added: “However, what the Prime Minister said about the correlation between uneducation, or low speaking of English in Muslim women, and being recruited by Daesh or being segregated, I do not think it is true.”

Daesh is a pejorative term used in the Muslim world for the Islamic State group, and David Cameron has suggested that Muslim women with poor English may be “more susceptible to the extremist message that comes from Daesh”.

Speaking about the policy, Mr Mady said: “For me, I’m really surprised about this.”

He said the number of Muslim women studying in Belfast exceeds men, and that “in our small community” they have a number of female nurses, engineers, and doctors.

“So how could I suggest that it’s a segregated sort of community, who segregate women and ask for them to stay at home, not allowing them education?” he asked.

Most of the 18 attendees at their bi-weekly English class are women “who are looking forward to developing their career”.

He said it “is not a good argument, to say that Muslim women are not having English language skills”.

He added: “If there are communities of low English skills, they are men and women alike. And there are some communities with good English skills, men and women alike. I don’t see in my career that there is a sort of distinction between men and women in this regard.”

Asked if Northern Irish Muslims may be susceptible to recruitment from Daesh, he said: “I don’t think so.”

David McNarry said the decision to spend £20m on the language project would provoke “considerable uproar”, and that the money would be better spent on the NHS.

When Mr Mady’s suggestion that there is little gender segregation in Northern Ireland was put to him, he said: “That’s not fully my information. My information is that many Muslim women who are not professional still play a subservient role in their homes in Northern Ireland.”

Asked his source, he said it came from meeting and speaking to Muslim women.

‘40,000 with no English’

Mr Cameron said it was not acceptable that women in parts of the UK were not allowed to leave their homes without a male relative, and faced sex-segregated school governors meetings.

He said the “evidence is that there are some 40,000 women in our country who really don’t speak any English”.

He added: “What we’ve said is that if people come here on a spousal visa, to be a husband or a wife, we’ve now said they have to learn English in order to get that visa. But after two-and-a-half years, halfway through the programme of getting settlement, they should be improving their English, and if they don’t do that then they can’t be guaranteed to be able to go to the full stage and retain their visa.”

He then faced a backlash, with top Tory Baroness Warsi calling the plans “lazy and misguided”.