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Web Letter

Katha Pollitt has performed a valuable service informing a mass readership of Nazia Quazi's plight. Still, I wonder if she's thought carefully about what an attempt to "whisk" Quazi out of Saudi Arabia might entail. Maybe Quazi will be lucky and Saudi Arabia won't see such actions as something to resist by strenuous and even violent means. Maybe Quazi won't be so lucky.

What is clear is that Quazi did something foolhardy in entering the cradle of Islam itself in the company of parents she plainly distrusted. Moreover, she seems intelligent enough to have avoided such a mistake. I suspect Nathalie Mohrin should have been, too. While both cases are worthy of outcry and efforts to make whole, I wonder if the facts on the ground make Canada's actions more prudent than Pollitt cares to see.

Douglas Presler

Minneapolis, MN

Jan 30 2010 - 1:02pm

Web Letter

OK, Canada (yes, I realize the oppression in this case is in Saudi Arabia.) And the rest of the West. Keep up the PC tolerance and this is what our lands and people are in for. Keep crapping on USA fighting, on France's weak attempts to control veils. The end result will be Sharia law being able to override local constitutions. Dump the PC now. Get serious about the threat from Sharia and jihadists. Contemplate mass deportations.

On the other hand, a return to a male-oriented society could have its advantages--for men.

mike flynn

New York , NY

Jan 27 2010 - 3:07pm

Web Letter

Tough case! While my personal sympathies are all with Nazia, this collides with proper legal and diplomatic principles going back centuries. Canadian law does not bind the Saudis on exit visas, any more than a Saudi judgment could force Canada to issue one.

I've run into the identical principle in monitoring child custody cases that are in dispute among, say New Jersey versus Montana. This last was in a real case, in which a divorced wife remarried to a man whose job shifted across the continent. Because of certain complicated problems, New Jersey retained jurisdiction for the non-custodial parent's position in the parents' divorce agreement.

John D. Froelich

Upper Darby, PA

Jan 23 2010 - 2:34am