ISLAMIC pupils are being failed by the state school system, according to the Muslim Council of Britain.

Tahir Alam, chairman of the council's education committee says many schools around the country, even those with a large number of Muslims in the classroom, are often only making "tokenistic" efforts to accommodate Islamic beliefs with a lack of prayer facilities and little teaching about the basic elements of the faith.

"French, German or Spanish may be offered, but very few offer Arabic," said Mr Alam.

"Islamic studies are often ignored and many schools do not even have prayer facilities or proper washing facilities for Muslim pupils.

"You could visit almost any state school with a large number of Muslim pupils and it probably will not be delivering anything to do with Islam.

"They may have four tokenistic assemblies a year on things like Eid or Ramadan, but that is clearly not enough."

Mr Alam has called for the creation of more Muslim state schools to cater for Islamic children.