Khan rejects Trump offer to exempt him from proposed ban on Muslims

Newly elected London mayor Sadiq Khan has dismissed an offer from US presidential candidate Donald Trump to make an exception to his planned ban on Muslims travelling to the US and allow Khan in.

Days after 14 people were killed in San Bernadino last December by a husband and wife couple, one of whom had reportedly pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS) group on Facebook, Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, called for a total shutdown of Muslims entering the country.

The ban, his campaign said at the time, should remain in effect "until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on".

On Monday, however, Trump reportedly said he was “happy” that Khan, elected to his new post on last Friday after a bitter and divisive campaign, would be running London.

“If he does a good job and frankly if he does a great job, that would be a terrific thing,” Trump was quoted in the New York Times as saying.

“There will always be exceptions,” Trump told the New York Times of whether he would impose his planned ban on Khan.

Khan responded on Tuesday saying that Trump’s “ignorant view of Islam could make both our countries less safe – it risks alienating mainstream Muslims around the world and plays into the hands of the extremists”.

"This isn’t just about me – it’s about my friends, my family and everyone who comes from a background similar to mine, anywhere in the world,” he said.

Trump and those around him, the mayor said, “think that western liberal values are incompatible with mainstream Islam. London has proved him wrong”.

In an interview with Time magazine last week, Khan said that if Trump's proposal to ban Muslims from entering the US became policy he would be prevented from engaging with American mayors.

"I want to go to America to meet with and engage with American mayors," he said.

"If Donald Trump becomes the president I'll be stopped from going there by virtue of my faith, which means I can't engage with American mayors and swap ideas."

Khan is the first Muslim to be the elected leader of the British capital, considered one of the country's most influential political posts outside of central government, and he will replace Boris Johnson, the outgoing Conservative mayor who had been in office since 2008.

Khan’s victory came in spite of repeated efforts by Zac Goldsmith, his Conservative Party opponent, to suggest that the human rights lawyer was soft on extremism, resulting in complaints that he had run a smear campaign based on “out and out lies”.