Haifa Amg does not want to be an asylum seeker. She wants to be a doctor, and was studying towards this in Glasgow. Then the Saudi Arabian authorities took action that made this impossible.
Haifa is one of what must be a small number of women funded by the Saudi government to study abroad, and had a scholarship that paid her fees. Saudi regulations required her to have a male guardian, but in her case this was no problem, since she was accompanied here by her husband Amri, a teacher of mathematics, and their children. What neither of them realised was that Amri would be asked to act as a conduit for unofficialcial payments from the Saudi government towards a group who were converting a church into a Wahhabist (which by many defnitions would make it extremist) mosque. This he was unwilling to do. The Saudi government imposed escalating pressures, culminating with freezing their Saudi Arabian bank account, and suspending Haifa’s scholarship. No scholarship, no bank account, no money to pay fees, no longer a student, loss of student visa. Haifa and family were left with two choices; to return to Saudi Arabia, where they could expect savage punishment, or to seek asylum. Unsurprisingly, they chose the latter, and their hearing is in August. The Draconian regulations that apply to visa seekers in the UK forbid them from working meantime. Rather than have the family sent to a detention centre, they have sold all their valuables, and survive on the goodwill of well-wishers.
I had the privilege of hearing Haifa address the Scottish Secular Society last Thursday, and here, with her permission, is what she had to say. As you will see, her family is being punished for the crime (and in Saudi Arabia is indeed is a crime) of unbelief, and it is this punishment that has frustrated their plans, and brought them to their present situation. As for the Saudi authorities, they come across as incompetent and inconsistent. Not for the first time, I have the impression of a lot going on behind-the-scenes. A new king came to the throne of Saudi Arabia early in 2015, since when the regime has become even more repressive, and I wonder if there is any connection with the events described here. I also wonder if the London Embassy, which issued Haifa’s scholarship, was aware of her husband’s record of dissent back home; they certainly seem to have been taken by surprise when he would not serve as a tool for their mission of advancing Wahhabism.
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