Nazia Quazi case encourages Canadian Muslims to speak out

Quazi is a Canadian citizen, but her father has worked in Saudi Arabia for years. The two butted heads over her boyfriend. She went to Saudi Arabia in 2007 on what was to be a short religious pilgrimage, but she says her father changed her status in the country without her knowledge, making himself her sponsor and male guardian. Now she is unable to leave without his permission and she accuses him of physically abusing her and threatening to kill her.

When Khan Salter – a trained lawyer – heard Quazi’s story, she felt compelled do something about it.

“The male guardianship system is completely un-Islamic,” says Khan Salter, chair of the Ottawa chapter of Muslims for Progressive Values, an organization based in Los Angeles that advocates for social justice, human rights, the separation of church and state, and tolerant, inclusive understandings of Islam. “It should be an embarrassment to the Saudis that they’re allowing this to continue,” she argues.

New public discourse

Such strong public statements are not always heard from a North American Muslim community that has often fallen silent in the face of civil, political, or human rights abuses.

“People don’t want to pop their heads up too high,” says Roumani. “They ask the question: ‘Do I really want to take that on?’“

Azhar Ali Khan has spent years trying to ensure that Western Muslims look beyond brick-and-mortar projects like building mosques, urging them instead to focus on engaging with the societies in which they live.

So far, he says, it has been a struggle. “I don’t see that the community is very engaged,” says Mr. Ali Khan, head of the Muslim Coordinating Council, an umbrella group that represents most Muslims organizations in the Ottawa region.

Time for introspection

But as the coffee flows in this Ottawa restaurant, so do hopes that Quazi’s case will give Canadian Muslims a chance to scrutinize themselves.

“This is an opportunity for the Muslim community to examine some of those values, to look at what it means to be a Canadian citizen and to think about: is this an opportunity for civic engagement?” says Fauzya Talib, one of the women at the meeting.

And more than that – many of them see this as an opportunity to push for reform within Saudi Arabia, and more widely, to change the kinds of mentalities that can lead to situations like Quazi’s.

“Part of the problem is that we have a silent moderate majority of Muslims – in North America, in Western Europe – who are not necessarily speaking out, [but] who don’t agree that women should be treated in this way,” Khan Salter insists.

New generation of activists

Population projections put the number of Muslims in Canada at more than 2.5 million by 2031, and the percentage of Canadian-born Muslims is expected to rise. Settlement experts says second and third generations are always more likely to get involved than their immigrant parents or grandparents.

Still, Khan Salter’s ambitions – the safe return of Nazia Quazi and the abolition of the Saudi male guardianship system altogether – are very high. Trying to convince Saudi Arabia that its ways are not only a violation of human rights, but also a violation of the spirit of Islam, is like venturing into a “minefield,” Ali Khan says.

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