When the glamorous, estranged, 46-year-old Princess Haya of Dubai quickly retreated, not to the welcoming bosom of her Jordan­ian family but straight to the British courts to try to keep custody of her children, a harsh spotlight was firmly beamed onto the patriarchal societies of the Middle East. For more than a decade, Haya used…

An ongoing international custody battle between Dubai’s ruler and one of his wives has undermined the deliberately cultivated image of the city as a playground for Western tourists that embraces modern sensibilities in an overwhelmingly conservative part of the world. For many outside the Middle East, Dubai has developed a reputation as a glitzy, cosmopolitan…

The billionaire ruler of Dubai and his sixth wife are locked in a matrimonial dispute in a London courtroom that could tear apart one of the Middle East’s most powerful families and cause political fallout across the region. Princess Haya bint al-Hussein left the royal palace in Dubai for Germany last month and then headed…