Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun, an 18-year-old Saudi\nwoman, was publicly welcomed to Canada Saturday. She had spent a week in a\nhotel in Thailand, asking for asylum in a Western country, saying that she did\nnot want to return to her allegedly abusive family, whom she says have\nthreatened to kill her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whether her family is indeed abusive has not\nbeen proven. But two factors make that issue somewhat moot. First, guardianship\nlaws in Saudi Arabia require women to get permission from a father, husband,\nbrother, son or other male relative in order to work, travel, marry, receive\ncertain medical treatments and even to leave the house. This is codified\ninequality and abuse against about half the population of the country. In\nprinciple, that law alone should make all Saudi women eligible for refugee\nclaims in democratic countries. Additionally, al-Qunun renounced Islam, which\nis an offence punishable by death in Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The teen\u2019s arrival was a bit of a media\nfestival, with Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland embracing al-Qunun at\nToronto\u2019s airport.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ostentatious greeting was extra-weighted\nbecause Canada is in an ongoing diplomatic spat with the Saudis. After Freeland\ntweeted a criticism of Saudi arrests of civil and women\u2019s rights activists last\nyear, the Saudis threw Canada\u2019s ambassador out of the country and threatened to\nwithdraw thousands of Saudi medical students from Canada, among other\nresponses. The public greeting of a now-prominent Saudi dissident by a senior\nCanadian government official will be seen as a provocation, and perhaps it was\nintended as such.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some commentators note that al-Qunun jumped the\nqueue, not only flown to Canada to make a refugee claim, but accepted\nimmediately as a refugee. The global visibility of her case resulted in a\ncountry \u2013 ours \u2013 leaping to accept her, even while one percent of refugees are\nresettled in a given year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Also, some diplomats with Saudi experience are\nwarning that the young woman should not be used as a political football \u2013 both\nbecause that could put her safety at risk and because it could unnecessarily\nenflame existing tensions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
David Chatterson, a former Canadian ambassador\nto Saudi Arabia, told the CBC that he worried about precedents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat happens the next time a teenage girl or\nadult woman from Saudi Arabia flees her family and declares herself to no\nlonger be a Muslim, does that mean automatic sanctuary?\u201d he asked. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course, diplomatic idealism is always\ntempered by economic and other realities. The CBC obtained, through an Access\nto Information request, evidence that the federal government heard concerns\nfrom Canadian businesses about their interests being jeopardized when\nFreeland\u2019s tweets to the Saudis raised the ire of the kingdom\u2019s rulers. On the\nflip side, Canada does not have as many economic ties to the Saudis as many\nEuropean and other democratic countries, and this might give us a little more\nfreedom to criticize. The U.S. president has already stated explicitly that he\nwill not endanger American economic interests by contesting Saudi treatment of\ndissidents \u2013 including the murder and dismemberment of Washington Post<\/em>\nwriter Jamal Khashoggi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of 149 countries rated by the World Economic\nForum in its annual report on gender equality, Saudi Arabia came 141st. Canada\ncannot free every one of the 16 million or so Saudi women, but we can ensure\nfreedom for this one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yes, al-Qunun did effectively \u201cjump the queue.\u201d\nBut, at the moment when the whole world was watching, that queue-jumping\nallowed Canada to take a principled stand for gender equality and for the\nfreedom of \u2013 and from \u2013 religion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Rahaf Mohammed al-Qunun, an 18-year-old Saudi woman, was publicly welcomed to Canada Saturday. She had spent a week in a hotel in Thailand, asking for asylum in a Western country, saying that she did not want to return to her allegedly abusive family, whom she says have threatened to kill her. Whether her family is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[8644,356,3597,2708,5635,3021],"class_list":["post-31666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-the-ji","tag-al-qunun","tag-immigration","tag-politics","tag-refugees","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-women"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31666\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}