"On Friday, Sir James Munby, the most senior judge in the family court, ruled that the parents had no grounds to appeal under UK law.

He added that while any judge should "respect the opinions of those who come here from a foreign land", he had to judge matters according to English law and by reference to "the standards of reasonable men and women in contemporary English society".

However, he criticised local authority social workers for referring to the parents as "bigoted".

The ruling follows government pressure for families to ignore previous rules, which said adopted children should be placed with families from a similar religious or cultural background, in order to increase the number of children from ethnic minority backgrounds who were adopted.

The parents are likely to appeal against the judgement in the European Court of Human Rights, in a process that could take months."