This earned the ire of the Home Office bureaucrat or bureaucrats charged with assessing the application, the Times reports. The official cobbled together six passages from the King James Version and New Internation Version of the Old and New Testaments — such as Matthew 10:34, in which Christ proclaims he “came not to send peace, but a sword” — in an effort to prove that the applicant’s view of Christianity was wrong, and that Christian scripture is in fact “filled with imagery of revenge, destruction, death and violence”.

“I am extremely concerned that a Government department could determine the future of another human being based on such a profound misunderstanding of the texts and practices of faith communities,” commented Paul Butler, Bishop of Durham for the Church of England.

The United Kingdom is, at least nominally, a Christian country, with the Queen also serving as the Supreme Governor of the established Church of England, and charged with defending the Protestant faith by her Coronation Oath. Meanwhile the Islamic Republic of Iran is, as the name would suggest, officially Islamic, with a religious cleric acting as Supreme Leader. Conversion from the state religion of Islam to Christianity in Iran is officially deemed as “apostasy” — a criminal offence which is punishable by death.