Boy’s Muslim mother stops father taking son to church

A BRITISH father has been banned from taking his son to a church after the boy’s Muslim mother won a controversial court order preventing the boy from attending.

The father – a non-practising Muslim who has forged close connections to his local Christian community and is divorced from the boy’s mother – has been warned he could be denied access to the nine-year-old if he attempts to take him to church or to a leisure centre it runs.

Now the father, who was born in the UK to Pakistani parents, is challenging the ruling made by District Judge Williscroft at Derby County Court earlier this month. Last week, he lodged an appeal with the High Court to have the order overturned.

‘This judge is simply scared of being branded Islamophobic,’ he said. ‘I want my son to have a balanced life in which he is exposed to different faiths and can make up his own mind about which, if any, religion he follows.’

The father, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said his ex-wife insisted their son, whom she is bringing up in the Muslim faith, could ‘become confused’ if he is subjected to other religions.

‘My son is being indoctrinated and the only way I can show him other things is to take him to other places,’ said the father. ‘If I don’t show him other types of life he will become just like a dumb sheep. I want him to see and learn about different cultures.

‘This is nothing short of brain-washing him. Already he is telling me that I have a black heart, that I am a bad man, because I am not a practising Muslim. I am heartbroken that I have to keep him away from activities with local children.

‘He is being fed the same lies I was as a child and I want better for him. This judge was so busy being politically correct that she has ignored the influence of myself as a loving father. I am terrified that he will stop wanting to see me because of his indoctrination.’

The man and his ex-wife married in 2003 and led a ‘Western lifestyle’.

‘That was important to me because of the strict religious manner in which I was brought up,’ he said. ‘I was taught that Christians were heartless and immoral, that only Muslims have a peaceful faith and all others are evil. It was only when I began mixing with Christians that I learned this was nonsense.’

But his Pakistani-born wife turned to the Muslim faith after her father’s death in 2007, when her mother told her that because he had not adhered to his faith he was in Hell, and would remain there unless she became a devout Muslim.

She began wearing a hijab and shunning the couple’s Christian friends. She left her husband in 2013, taking their son with her.