The saga of the 18-year-old Saudi girl, Rahaf Mohammed, has ended. She is now safe in Canada, where she was granted asylum, and was even greeted at Toronto’s airport on January 10 by Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland. She had been on the run from her family who, she said, might well kill her. Her crime? Daring to think for herself. At the age of 16, she had apparently thought for herself, and decided to leave Islam. She did not announce it to anyone in her family, but from that time forth she began to plan her escape from Saudi Arabia. She was in touch by email with another Saudi girl, also an apostate, who had managed to make it safely to the West, and from whose example Rahaf took heart. She initially set her sights on Australia.

When the family traveled to Kuwait on vacation in early January, she saw her chance. Once they were in Kuwait, she managed to evade the rest of her family and returned to the airport, where she took a flight to Thailand. At the Bangkok airport, she was met by Thai officials working with the local Saudis. They took away her passport, but did not take possession of Rahaf herself. She checked into an airport hotel, where she locked herself in a room. Thai guards stood outside. An official of Kuwait Airways came to plead with her, through a closed door, to go back to Kuwait. Nothing doing. Meanwhile, Rahaf Mohammed was contacting her friends on her phone, social media spread the story, and her plight was picked up by major news outlets, including the BBC and CNN.

The huge international outcry led Thai authorities to grant UNHCR (United Nations High Commission For Refugees) access to her “to assess her need for international refugee protection,” the UNHCR said in a statement.

Phil Robertson, the deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, said: “Today really was a good day for the cause of human rights around the world, with Rahaf’s tremendous courage and resilience being met with a global surge of sympathy for her. It all came together to persuade Thailand to do the right thing.”

Rahaf was still in Thailand when her father and brother arrived in Bangkok. She refused to see them; she said she was in “fear for her life.” In any case, we can all imagine the kind of performance they would put on if she had finally consented to such a meeting. Aware that they were being filmed, the father would no doubt have promised, in the nicest possible way, not to harm her in the least “if only you come home now, my daughter, and stop making a spectacle that is hurting our family and our country.” His wary daughter didn’t give him that chance.

Rahaf’s public plea for asylum expanded to include Canada, the U.S., and the United Kingdom, as well as Australia. Canada was the first to respond, and now she is safe in Toronto.

It’s a very important case. Thanks to Rahaf Mohammed, the world has been given a good look at several aspects of Islam that deserve to be held up for inspection.

First, there is the demonstration that despite Qur’an 2:256, a favorite verse for Islamic apologists that says “there is no compulsion in religion,” the example of Rahaf Mohammed shows that there most certainly is “compulsion” in the religion of Islam. The threat of death for apostasy, which Rahaf Mohammed clearly fears, constitutes all the “compulsion” any Muslim needs to stay within the faith. As for non-Muslims, it is true that People of the Book, ahl al-kitab — Jews, Christians, and Sabeans — are permitted to remain alive, and even to practice their religions, but they can do so only as “dhimmis,” tolerated as long as they fulfill a long list of onerous and humiliating conditions, of which the most important is the Jizyah tax. And that explains why millions of non-Muslims have, over the centuries, converted to Islam, because they knew it was the only way to escape from the conditions imposed on them as dhimmis. That need to escape dhimmi status constitutes another kind of “compulsion in religion.”

Second, there is the treatment of this 18-year-old girl by her devout Muslim family, which has given the world’s Infidels a vivid idea of Muslim family relations, with a despotic father who exercises total control over his children, and where a brother can similarly act as an “enforcer” for a disobedient sister. For having her hair cut in a way her family did not approve — was it merely a matter of taste, or was it deemed un-Islamic? — Rahaf was locked in her room for six months. This is one example her own story has brought to the world’s attention, demonstrating the kind of power wielded by Muslim males over an errant female family member. It’s a horrifying picture.