Ahmed Khadr - Marriage and Travel

Marriage and Travel

Ahmed and Maha married in November at Jami Mosque in Toronto. In May 1978, the couple moved to Ottawa so Ahmed could finish his studies. In 1979, Maha gave birth to Zaynab.

Khadr joined the Muslim Students Association at the university and came to agree with their notions of Sharia law, and became a vocal advocate of Islamic rule for his native Egypt.

While Ahmed was employed at Bell Northern Research, Maha gave birth to Abdullah in 1981, while Ahmed was writing his Masters Thesis, entitled "Development of a CSSL interface to GASP IV". The following year, Ahmed was offered a position at the Gulf Polytechnique University in Bahrain, where he hoped to become a professor. Finding the luxuries of living in Canada not to his liking, he accepted the position.

In 1982, Maha gave birth to Abdurahman. Disappointed to find Western influences in Bahrain, Ahmed became captivated by the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan and began to feel guilty about his relative wealth and comfort, compared to the Muslim widows and orphans in Afghanistan.

Through 1983 and 1984, the family remained in Bahrain while the children were in school, and during the summer holidays Ahmed would travel to Pakistan while his wife took the three children back home to Scarborough, Canada where they lived with her parents. Ignoring the arguments of Azzam Tamimi, an Islamic academic living in Bahrain at the time, Ahmed insisted that he had no intentions of helping to fight the Soviets, only of helping the victims of the invasion.