What is it about Pakistani men that glamourous women from the West find so irresistible? The latest rumour of pop singer Britney Spears possibly converting to Islam and moving to Pakistan with her companion Adnan Ghalib has set off a debate among women in the country.

The grapevine is abuzz with twice-divorced singer Spears’ romance with little known Ghalib, a man of Pakistani origin. Spears, according to Britain’s Sun newspaper, wanted to fake her death, embrace Islam, move to Pakistan and start a new life.

‘Gold digger’

Ghalib (35), who works for a photo agency, is being described as “a gold digger” whom the “lonely and vulnerable” Spears cannot do without.

According to media reports, Ghalib’s respectable Sunni Muslim family in Birmingham is so horrified by his antics that they have disowned him.

“His parents Ghalib and Saghra are devastated. This week his dad gave him an ultimatum, ‘Give up Britney, or you are dead to me,’ which Adnan ignored,” a friend was quoted as saying.

But much before Spears, there was Jemima Khan, the glamourous daughter of a millionaire who married the much older cricketer Imran Khan against her family’s wishes and moved to Pakistan. Their marriage did not last and she was back in London with her two sons in less than a decade. The romance of Diana, the Princess of Wales, who reportedly found her ‘Mr Wonderful’ in a Pakistani cardiologist in London, is another case in point.