THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: A Canadian student held captive for three years in Saudi Arabia under the kingdom’s controversial “guardianship” laws has been allowed to leave and marry her fiance after she issued a desperate online plea for help.
In a tale of star-crossed lovers that gripped newspaper readers on two continents, Nazia Quazi, a Canadian of Indian Muslim origin, fell in love with a fellow student, Bjorn Singhal, who was born to a partly Hindu family.
To prevent them marrying, her father used his power under the Saudi legal code to stop her leaving the country after she went on a visit. But following a campaign by supporters in Canada that was taken up by the media there and even in Saudi newspapers, he has now relented and allowed the marriage to take place in Dubai.
“I still can’t believe it,” Miss Quazi, 24, told reporters this week after the wedding. “I keep pinching myself and I keep pinching him.”
Despite attempts to reform the system by the current monarch, King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia still has the most conservative attitudes towards women of any country in the world.
The rules most obvious to outsiders are that unrelated men and women are not allowed to mingle, women must wear a head-covering outside at all times, and are not allowed to drive.
But more important for many residents is the need for all women, even the growing number of high-powered business executives, to conform to the wishes of their nearest male relative, usually a husband, father or brother, for all practical aspects of life.
Miss Quazi’s father, Quazi Malik Abdul Gaffar, who worked in Saudi Arabia, used this law to try and cut off the romance that had developed between his daughter and Mr Singhal, an Indian who lives in Dubai.
The Quazi family had Canadian citizenship, and the pair met when they were both studying at Ottawa University. >>> Richard Spencer in Dubai | Sunday, May 23, 2010
