A Muslim mother who fears having her child taken from her under Sharia if sent back to her homeland won the right to stay in the UK from the House of Lords yesterday.

Five law lords ruled that the human rights of the Lebanese woman, EM, and her 12-year-old son, AF, who cannot be named for legal reasons, would be “flagrantly violated” and “nullified” if forced to return to Lebanon.

The 36-year-old Muslim claimed asylum in the UK in December 2004, saying that she had divorced her husband because of his violence and fled from Lebanon in order to keep her child.

Under Sharia, the woman’s “violent” ex-husband would automatically be granted full custody rights.

But yesterday her challenge to a Court of Appeal ruling that upheld the Home Secretary’s decision refusing asylum was upheld.

And in critical observations on Sharia as applied in Lebanon, one of the law lords, Lord Hope of Craighead, said that it was "created by and for men in a male-dominated society”.

He added: “There is no place in it for equal rights between men and women” and was by our standards “arbitrary” because it did not allow for exceptions; and was “discriminatory” because it denied women custody of their children after a certain age, simply because they were women.”

The case for allowing mother and child to remain in the UK were “compelling,” he said.

The ruling in the case, which was backed by campaign groups Justice and Liberty, overturns earlier rulings by the Court of Appeal, by the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal and the Home Secretary, that returning the woman to Lebanon would flagrantly violate their rights to family life.

After the ruling, James Welch, Liberty’s legal director, said: “How can the Government speak of equal treatment in one breath and seek to deport mother and child to face separation under Sharia law in another?

“The law lords have rightly upheld basic protections which must be available to us all.”

Quashing the Home Secretary’s decision, Lord Bingham of Cornhill, said of EM: “Her evidence, accepted as true in these proceedings, is that during her marriage her husband subjected her to violence, beating her, trying to throw her off a balcony and trying, on one occasion at least, to strangle her.

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