A “Pastafarian” in rural Queensland has vowed to fight to keep his driver’s licence featuring a photo of him wearing a colander on his head, arguing it’s a matter of freedom of religion.

But the state government has told him he must hand it in and get a new one, as it was issued “in error”.

Syaban Shadikillah, who has been living and working in Mareeba in the state’s far north after moving to Australia in late 2024, insists his licence is valid and says he does not want to retake the photo.

He said it was a matter of principle and freedom of expression, and that it was a violation of his right to wear religious headgear: the colander.

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Shadikillah, 28, said he converted from Islam to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster in 2021 while a university student in his home country of Indonesia due to his growing doubts about the religion in which he’d been raised.

Also known as Pastafarianism, the new religious movement began with an open letter US physics graduate Bobby Henderson wrote in 2005 to protest against the teaching of intelligent design, a form of creationism, in Kansas schools.

He argued that the same logic behind intelligent design equally applied to a universe created by a flying spaghetti monster with noodly appendages.

In the letter, Henderson maintained that the “chosen outfit” of the faith was “full pirate regalia”.

This was later modified to include colanders. Pastafarians maintain it is an expression of their religion in a similar manner to a hijab or Sikh turban.

Shadikillah is the latest in a string of Pastafarians to apply for government-issued ID featuring colander headgear.

In 2011, an Austrian man wore a pasta strainer on his head for his driver’s licence photo and claimed this meant it had been acknowledged as religious dress, though police later said they had approved the image simply because his face was fully visible.

In 2015, the Age reported a Melbourne man, Benjamin Ady, had been issued a licence with a photo of him wearing a colander, after convincing a manager at VicRoads Carlton to let him be photographed with the kitchen item.

Shadikillah said he was issued his Queensland driver’s licence in February after being photographed wearing the colander at a government customer service office in Mareeba, west of Cairns.

After his Facebook post of his new licence “went viral”, Shadikillah said he was contacted by a government official last week telling him it was not legitimate religious headgear.

“Which is absurd – they don’t have the authority to decide what religious headwear is appropriate or not,” Shadikillah told Guardian Australia on Saturday.

“It’s basically a violation of freedom of expression in Australia, right? That’s the way I see it.”

He said he moved to Australia because it allowed for greater freedom of expression than Indonesia, where he claimed authorities have a warrant out for his arrest for blaspheming against Islam.

The Queensland government’s website states that headgear is only permitted to be worn for licence photos if it is for religious purposes. Queensland and other states have ruled that Pastafarianism does not count as a religion for driver’s licences.

Shadikillah said he and other Pastafarians wanted to “be recognised and respected just like any other religion” and that the law should apply equally to everyone.

“Most of us don’t believe in the supernatural, in Pastafarianism,” he said. “I agree with its core values – it’s basically freedom of expression [and] we don’t have dogma, we don’t condone coercion.”

A spokesperson for Queensland’s department of customer services said: “Driver licensing operational policy guidelines were not adhered to in this instance, resulting in a non-compliant driver licence photo being taken and issued to a customer. This was a result of human error.”

They said a new photograph would need to be taken “to ensure compliance with the guidelines” before a replacement licence was issued.