A foster mother has been struck off by a council after a teenage Muslim girl in her care became a Christian.

The foster mother said she had recently bought a larger car and had been renting a farmhouse, with a pony in a field, so that she could provide more disadvantaged children with a new life.

‘That was always my dream and then suddenly, bang, it was gone. I am now in a one-bedroom flat,’ she added.

The woman insisted that, although she was a Christian, she had put no pressure on the Muslim girl, who was 16 at the time, to be baptised.

But council officials allegedly accused her of failing to ‘respect and preserve’ the child’s faith and tried to persuade the girl to reconsider her decision.

‘It never occurred to me that they would go that far,’ she said. ‘I was concerned that the council seemed to view Christianity in such a negative light. I wonder whether if it had gone the other way – if one of my Christian young people had decided to embrace another faith – there would have been this level of fuss.’

She added that the girl has been devastated by the experience.

Full story: www.mailonsunday.co.uk/news/article-1138701/Foster-parent-looked-80-children-struck--Muslim-girl-care-Christian.html

This happened in the UK. I'm interested in what British or European formites have to say, but from the outside it seems like the cultural cringe over there is getting a bit alarming. In trying to "protect" the kid's freedom of religion, they stamped on it with combat boots.

The girls is 16 years old....I think she is old to enough to think for herself - where she wants to be religious or non-religious.

That's ridiculous what they did to the foster mother.

Agree with you both. Didn't they even consider the fact that the girl could have decided without any pressure? I too wonder if would there have been a comparable reaction if the conversion had gone the other way round...

This is really distressing, and borderline stupid. 16 is old enough to make your own choices, and penalizing the foster mother isn't the answer. It doesn't matter what they would have done had she converted the opposite way, what matters is that the council decided that it wasn't okay for a young woman to make decisions afecting her life and punished the woman who choose to take care of her for doing so.

Wow. This makes me feel almost physically sick.