Olga Craig reports for The Mail On Sunday, March 26, 2016, that a judge in the UK ruled in favor of a Muslim woman by banning her ex-husband from taking their 9-year-old son to church, on the grounds that the boy whom she is bringing up in the Muslim faith, could “become confused” if he is “subjected” to other religions. The father, who was born in the UK to Pakistani parents, is a non-practicing Muslim who has forged close connections to his local Christian community.
District Judge Williscroft at Derby County Court warned the dad that he could be denied access to his son if he attempts to take him to church or to a leisure center run by the church.
Note: The judge’s full name is Elizabeth Susan Williscroft, 62. In February 2008, she was appointed a District Judge and assigned to the Midlands Circuit.
The father, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has lodged an appeal with the High Court to have the judge’s order overturned. He said, “This judge is simply scared of being branded Islamophobic. 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. My son is being indoctrinated and the only way I can show him other things is to take him to other places. 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 practicing 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 [my son] will stop wanting to see me because of his indoctrination.”
The man and his ex-wife married in 2003 and led a “Western lifestyle,” which was important to him because of the strict religious manner in which he’d been brought up. He explains: “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 attending a madrasa, wearing a hijab, and shunning the couple’s Christian friends. She left her husband in 2013, taking their son with her. The couple divorced last year. The boy lives with his mother but sees his father every other weekend.
The man said, “After my divorce, the Christian community embraced me. They run many activities my son enjoys so I go to the church and would like to take my son. But when his mother found out, she applied to the court and won the order which prevents the boy being taken to any Christian building.”
The order bars the father from taking the boy to any religious event. It decrees he must provide only Halal food and tell the boy he is “an ordinary Muslim boy following Muslim rules”.
Leading Christians and legal experts are outraged over the judge’s decision.
Barrister Andrea Williams, of the Christian Legal Center and a member of the Church of England General Synod, described the ruling as “pandering to Islam” and “a form of judicial bullying.” Williams said, “The wife is using the law to coerce and silence a father’s right to determine his son’s religious experience. This chimes generally with what we see with the judicial system acting as if it is afraid of upsetting Islam and therefore showing a willingness to suppress the Christian faith and punishing those who practice it. This would not have happened the other way around. If a Christian parent was trying to deny a child access to a mosque, there would be a huge outcry and claims of Islamophobia.”
Simon Calvert of the Christian Institute said: “This is not the first time that I’ve heard of proceedings where the authority has tried to prevent a child being exposed to the Christian faith. One has to ask if the courts would have done the same with any other faith. There is a general feeling that Christianity is an easy target because there is rarely any public backlash. I think the fact that the father is himself of Muslim heritage shows there was no need for such over-sensitivity.”
H/t Don Hanks
~Eowyn
