A Muslim mother is trying to win full custody of her 11-year-old son who she believes her ex-husband is trying to radicalise.
Nabila Albargouthy says her former husband Isam has been filling their son’s head with extreme views since they separated in 2012 when he demanded a second wife.
The alleged influence led the son to declare in the playground of his school in Pleasantville, New York, last year that he would ‘die for Allah’.
The school contacted police after another student reported the then 10-year-old’s remarks.
Nabila Albargouthy claims her former husband Isam is trying to radicalize their 11-year-old son
The mother’s petition reads: ‘That day, certain students told [her son] that Jesus is God,” the court papers say.
‘He responded… “No — Allah is God” and that [Allah] is different because “I would die for my God and they would not die for their God.”‘
Albargouthy claims that on separate occasions, her son has told her he wants to have a ‘cabinet full of guns’ when he is an adult.
She says he also told the boy he could not play the saxophone or take part in school plays because it was against his religion.
‘My deep concern is that he is radicalizing a beautiful, young, innocent mind; a fragile child,’ she said in a court petition which was obtained by The New York Post.
Albargouthy was born in Palestine but moved to the US from Israel when she was five.
Her husband moved to the US from Jordan as a teenager. They lived first in Minnesota where they got married, had the boy and his sister.
Albargouthy says her husband’s behavior suddenly changed in 2007.
She says he was caught stealing computer equipment from his job and that the family was forced to move to a new state for him to find work.
In September last year, the boy told a classmate at Pleasantville Middle School in New York that Allah was the only God and that he would die for him
DailyMail.com could find no record of any arrest in Minnesota.
Albargouthy says he then began telling her to give up exercise, which she loved, and asked her to become more conservative.
She described one occasion when he allegedly told her: ‘We are different than Americans. We do not socialize with them.’
She says that their marriage fell apart in 2012 when he told her he wanted a second wife. She refused and he filed for divorce.
Isam, the woman’s husband, has not responded to her allegations.
The FBI would not comment on Wednesday on whether or not the school incident was ever reported to them.
The boy’s school also declined to comment because the matter is still in court.