Qt5 QIcon::fromTheme() can't load icon themes owned by root

I'm using Ubuntu 13.04 / 13.10 and Manjaro 0.8.9 (though this should be the same on any (Linux) OS), using Qt 5.0. When using QIcon::fromTheme("..."), if that icon theme is owned by root, it doesn't load any icon (it can't find the icon theme actually), but if that same icon theme is owned by user, it loads the icons just fine.

Test case: i used AwOken icon theme, which i copied to home folder. I then used QIcon::setThemeSearchPaths(QStringList() << ("/home/mark/")); and Icon::setThemeName("AwOken"); and then i played with permission on Awoken icon theme. If theme.index file from AwOken was owned by root, it couldn't find any file. If theme.index was owned by user, but the icons were owned by root, it could load some of the icons, and for some it just loaded a null icon (e.g. it didn't load 'exit', but it loaded 'gtk-preferences'). If both the icons and theme.index were loaded by user, everything was ok, it loaded all icons successfully.

If the icon theme is found in /usr/share/icons, every time QIcon::fromTheme("...") fails...