A 33 year old Muslim mother from the United Kingdom has appeared in court for beating her son to death for failing to learn the Quraan. Sara Ege denies murdering seven year old Yaseen Ali Ege and setting fire to his body in July 2010.

Sarah told the Cardiff Crown Court that she could read the entire Quraan when she was Yaseen’s age and had taken part in competitions to display her knowledge of Islam.

She was excited for the little boy to impress an imam (leader) with his knowledge. However like all boys his age, Yaseen wanted to play and fell behind. She said "I was trying to teach him the Koran but he was not very good. I was getting more and more frustrated, if he didn't read it properly I would be very angry; I would hit him. We had a high target. I wanted him to learn 35 pages in three months. I promised him a new bike if he could do it. But Yaseen wasn't very good, after a year of practice he had only learned a chapter."

Due to the frustration emanating from Yaseen’s lack of progress in learning the Quraan, Sarah told the court the various punishments she inflicted upon the little boy. “I was getting all this bad stuff in my head, like I couldn't concentrate. I was getting angry too much. I would shout at Yaseen all the time. I was getting very wild. I use to beat him with a stick,” said Sarah

The devil made me do it.

If that wasn’t enough, Sarah also hit her son with a hammer, a rolling pin and a slipper as well as repeatedly punching him. She would also lock him up in the shed, tie him to a door, and force him to do push-ups. Months after her son's death, she told a doctor that she felt "100% better" after he died, believing she’d been told to kill him by shaitan (devil). She said: "It is shaitan; it is the devil which is telling me to do all these bad things. I have become so harsh; I even killed my own son." Sarah’s doctor recorded her as saying, "It is like something has been released. For three or four months I have not been normal."

Sarah is university graduate who grew up in India before marrying British husband, Yousuf, 38 who was also accused of causing the boy's death by failing to protect him was exonerated. He used to drive Yaseen to a mosque for Quraan practice before and after school. He said he never saw his wife raise a hand to the boy.

Moulana Ebrahim Bham the secretary general from the Jamiatul Ulama says, “Islamically, beating a child to learn the Quraan is wrong. Some parents exert unnecessary pressure and force children to become a Hafiz, which is not fard (compulsory). The Quraan and Islamic knowledge must be inculcated through love and children must be willing to learn without any force or pressure.”