Ibrahim Baylan

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ibrahim Baylan

Ibrahim Baylan (born 1972) is a Swedish Social Democratic politician. He was (as of 2005) Minister for Schools in the Swedish government on 6 October 2006, when he was replaced by Jan Björklund, who represents the Liberal People's Party.

Ibrahim Baylan studied economics at Umeå University, and was engaged in student politics. In 1997, Baylan became the chair of the Swedish Social Democratic Youth League in Umeå. The same year, he was elected chair of the Umeå Union of Students and also became a member of the municipal school board.

From 2000, Baylan worked for the Swedish Union of Commercial Salaried Employees as an ombudsman. As a result of the 2002 Swedish parliamentary elections he became an alternate member of the Riksdag, the Swedish parliament. He was on the Social Democratic ballot for the 2004 European Parliament elections, but he was not elected. Later the same year, he was appointed the Minister for Schools by Prime Minister Göran Persson, thus becoming the first non-European immigrant to become a member of the Swedish Government.

As Minister for Schools he has been involved in a controverse about a report from the Swedish National Agency for Education that was withdrawn after criticism from minister Baylan. He was reported to the Swedish Committee on the Constitution and called to a hearing on 12 April 2005.

Ibrahim Baylan is an ethnic Assyrian, born in Tur Abdin, Turkey, belonging to the Syriac Orthodox Church. His parents left the country with him in the early 1980s. They settled in Botkyrka, a suburb of Stockholm.