I saw that showing of the movie "Not Without My Daughter" also, and then took the book out of the library and read it twice. In that wife's case, her Iranian husband had lived and worked in the USA for twenty years. The Iranian revolution radicalized him, and he kept his wife and daughter hostage when they visited his relatives in Iran. It is a fascinating read.
That book will scare the socks off of *any* woman with more than two brain cells. While I don't feel that sympathetic either, the problem is that women at universities, especially, are *courted* by these guys. They find them charming, marry them before seeing the "home country" first hand, and don't even think what's going to happen when their husband wants to go back with kids in tow.
The bad part is that if the kids are born here, they're citizens. But once the kids are taken to Saudi Arabia, or Iran, or probably a host of other wahhabi or fundamentalist Islamic countries, they're considered the father's "property." The woman *can* divorce her husband under Islamic law and get out (if he doesn't kill her first, that is) but then the children are left to their fate. The kids don't deserve that - which is why everyone is concerned.