The Islamic full-body covers do much harm – they imprison women, lead to accidents, create social alienation, help terrorists and criminals, and cause rickets. But once in a while, they do some good, even saving lives. This weblog entry documents such unexpected instances.
Fatah leader tries to escape Hamas: Jamal Abu Jadian, a top Fatah commander and a sworn enemy of Hamas, tried to avoid the Hamas takeover of Gaza in disguise but failed. He fled his home in northern Gaza on the evening of June 12, writes Khaled Abu Toameh,
dressed as a woman to avoid dozens of Hamas militiamen who had attacked it. He and several members of his family and bodyguards were lightly wounded. But when Abu Jadian arrived at a hospital a few hundred meters away from his house, he was discovered by a group of Hamas gunmen, who took turns shooting him in the head with automatic rifles. 'They literally blew his head off with more than 40 bullets,' said a doctor at Kamal Udwan Hospital.
(June 12, 2007)
Frenchman flees Dubai: Hérvé Jaubert, a French businessman with a clandestine background, used Islamic headgear to escape what appears to be undeserved punishment in Dubai. His project, to build leisure submarines for the wealthy, crashed with the economic downturn and left him accused of embezzling $3.8 million.
Andrew Higgins of the Washington Post tells the story:
Fired from Exomos, the submarine company, and unable to get his passport back, Jaubert hatched an elaborate escape plan. He sent his wife and their two boys to Florida. He had diving equipment shipped out from France—broken down into small bits to avoid arousing suspicion. Then, using a phony name, he bought a Zodiac dinghy and sailboat. Using Google Earth, he surveyed the UAE coastline for an escape route. He found an isolated beach and arranged for a friend to take the sailboat out into international waters.
Herve Jaubert dressed in niqab.
On the eve of his escape, the former spy checked into a hotel near the beach, put on his diving equipment and donned a long abaya, the body-covering cloak worn by strictly observant Muslim women. He said he then went down the beach and swam underwater to a nearby harbor, where the only patrol boat in the vicinity was moored. He clambered aboard and sabotaged the fuel line to make sure the craft could not give chase, he said.
Jaubert then set out to sea in the dinghy to the boat his friend had positioned just outside the UAE's territorial waters, and they sailed toward India. After eight days at sea, the pair arrived in Mumbai—an account corroborated by his traveling companion. With a new passport issued by the French consulate, Jaubert flew to join his wife in Florida, where he is writing a book he has titled "Escape From Dubai."
(August 10, 2009) Nov. 10, 2011 update: In response to my asking whether the newspaper accounts of his escape were correct, Jaubert sent me the following:
Pour les journaux, ca depend, l'erreur la plus commune que j'ai pu voir c'est de dire que je me suis evade en Zodiac ET en burqa.
I escaped on the rubber boat, yes, but not in burqa, I was dressed normally, for a woman in burqa alone on an inflatable raft would have looked odd. I disguised in the burqa BEFORE my escape, to get around unnoticed and also the night before, to cover my frogman gear when I went to the beach to disable the only police boat.
Jaubert then tells me about this legal troubles and concludes with general thoughts about the beauty of the burqa for Western clandestine services:
Le coup du voilier pour rentrer et sortir en clandestin d'un pays est courant; aussi, je l'ai fait une douzaine de fois au service. Donc à Dubai, c était une promenade pour moi.
Le coup de la burqa, pareil, je suis sur que les autres agents l'utilisent aussi, la CIA et le Mossad. Ca marche tellement bien. Meme un flic n'a pas le droit de parler ou de stopper une femme en burqa. En fait personne ne fait attention. C'est vraiment incroyable.
A Dubai, je me souviens d'un vol a main armée dans une bijouterie, des malfrats deguisés en burqa ont commis un hold up, et se sont tirés avec $3M en bijoux. C'etaient des russes, ils se sont fait prendre plus tard, parce qu'ils ne savaient pas que tous les emirats sont surveilles, ils se sont fait prendre a cause de leur voiture de location et du passport qu'ils avaient laissé en copie. J'explique pourquoi dans mon livre. Il faut vraiment avoir l'experience d'un espion pour se sortir de la.
J'ai meme fait mieux que le Mossad: les tueurs du Mossad à Dubai se sont tous fait retapissées, photos et video, durant leur operation quand ils ont flingué the terrorist palestinien dans son hotel. Encore une fois parce qu'ils ne connaissaient pas le système de surveillance à Dubai.
Moi je l'avais etudie, et donc, c'est pourquoi ils n'ont jamais su comment je m'etais evade; pas une camera, ne ma vu.
May 13, 2018 update: Jaubert is back in the news in Dubai, helping Sheikha Latifa, daughter of the ruler, escape the country.
Dutch cartoonist hides under a burqa: The Dutch cartoonist who ridicules Islam and goes under the pseudonym Gregorius Nekschot was arrested in 2008 for cartoons that broke anti-discrimination laws; he actually spent a brief time in jail for this sin. Accordingly, "Nekschot" appeared in at an event in Denmark totally hidden under a burqa to hide his appearance. Should he be arrested again, he does not want his Muslim fellow prisoners to know what he looks like. "A trial may be long and exhausting. And if I am forced to appear in court without a veil, that will give every religious fanatic a 'license to kill'." (September 21, 2010)
Kalli Atteya in niqab.
American mother rescues child in Egypt: Kalli Atteya, 45, of Pennsylvania, married an Egyptian, Mohammed Khalil Atteya, in 1999, after which he abandoned her and their son, Niko. They divorced in 2005 and Atteya returned to Egypt. He convinced Kalli to bring Niko to Egypt in August 2011 on the grounds that his dying mother wanted to say farewell to her grandson. Then, Andy Soltis of the New York Post recounts,
on a desolate road between Cairo and Port Said, he dumped Kalli and drove off with Niko so he could bring him up as a Muslim, she told Fox News. Kalli spent more than $100,000 to track him down to the city of Alexandria. In March, she dressed up in a burqa so she could blend in on the streets. When Niko got off a school bus, she grabbed him and they sped off in a motorized golf cart. "I thought, thank God, I'm going to finally get out of here," Niko said later.
(April 26, 2013)
British mother rescues child in Egypt: It's almost a repeat of the prior story. Alex Abou-El-Ella, 29, Polish born and living in Slough, Berkshire, United Kingdom, married Mustafa Abou-El-Ella in 2009 and bore Mona later that year. When Mona was a year old, Mustafa told Alex he was taking the girl to visit friends but instead went to Heathrow airport, bought a ticket and boarded an EgyptAir flight, taking the child to Egypt. Alex recruited Donya Al-Nahi, known as Jane Bond for helping several mothers rescue their children. Together, they found Mona's school and as the child was on the way there with an aunt and another child, Alex donned a black hijab, swooped in, grabbed Mona, and rushed off to a waiting car. Alex then used an elder child's passport to get Mona out of Egypt and back to the U.K. (August 4, 2013)
San Diego woman wears burqa as a prank: Kimberly Thorner, general manager of the Encinitas-based Olivenhain Municipal Water District (near San Diego) put on a burqa in 2009 and posed as a job applicant to tease her director of operations. The incident became public now when someone displeased with such cultural insensitivity sent a photograph of Thorner in burqa and four smiling staffers posing with her to the San Diego Union-Tribune, which proceeded to make a major issue of it by snagging quotes from CAIR and other aggrieved Islamists (as well as Khaleel Mohammed, who was not offended). CAIR ended up the winner from this episode: its local head Hanif Mohebi offered to provide cultural sensitivity training and Thorner said she would take him up on the offer. (August 20, 2014)
 Kimberly Thorner and her colleagues. |
Dutch mother rescues child in Syria: Aïcha, 19 and from Maastricht, The Netherlands, converted to Islam, married the notorious jihadi Omar Yılmaz, moved to join him in ISIS-controlled Raqqa, Syria – and then repented. Her mother, Monique, donned a burqa, traveled to Syria, and helped Aïcha escape to Turkey. (November 19, 2014) Nov. 20, 2014 update: The Dutch public prosecutor has thrown cold water on this valiant story.
Indian editor hides after publishing a Charlie Hebdo cartoon: It gets ironic. The Jan. 17 Bombay issue of the Lucknow-based, Urdu-language newspaper Avadhnama, ran a cartoon of the Islamic prophet Muhammad from Charlie Hebdo that got its editor, Shireen Dalvi, a Muslim, arrested for offending religious sensibilities. Upon release on bail, she so feared for her safety that she took up wearing a burqa. "I have never worn a burqa but now feel the need to do so. Some people have commented that this whole episode is God's way of punishing me so that I am forced to hide my face," she said. In an interview to the Indian Express sitting in a restaurant she struggled to drink juice from a glass: "How do I drink this now?" (February 3, 2015)
Escaping house arrest: Deposed Yemeni President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi escaped house arrest at about 4 a.m. and is expected to withdraw the resignation he offered under pressure from the Houthi. It is widely thought he snuck out by disguising himself as a covered woman. (February 21, 2015)
Fleeing ISIS: The Iraqi army reports having arrested 20 male ISIS members in the northern city of Baquba who had put on burqas, dresses, and even brassieres to escape the fighting in Tikrit. (March 16, 2015)
Hiding from reporters: Gisele Bündchen, the Brazilian (of German heritage) who is the world's highest paid model donned a burqa to make her way discreetly to a cosmetic surgeon in Paris, at the International Clinique du Parc Monceau, reportedly to fix her "sagging" breasts and eyes.
 Gisele Bündchen as she likes to be seen. |
But her mission did not remain secret for long: her driver and her open-toed sandals gave her away. She felt compelled to hide this visit after promising never to get plastic surgery. Ironically, wearing a burqa in public is illegal in France. (July 30, 2015)
 Gisele Bündchen hiding under a burqa. |
Man wears burqa to meet with lover: An unnamed 33-year-old married Turkish man and father of two children thought he could sneak off and meet a woman he found on a dating site in the Black Sea province of Urdu. But he wore men's shoes and so was apprehended on suspicions of planning a suicide bombing. (November 2, 2015)
Undercover Israeli soldier wears a niqab: An Israeli unit captured a wanted suspect in a hospital in Hebron by sending in a team disguised as civilians. Associated Press reports that
The hospital released security camera footage showing about a dozen men entering a hospital ward shortly before 4 a.m. A person in a wheelchair suddenly stood up as the security men pulled out their weapons and walked down the hall. One officer was disguised as a Palestinian woman in a black niqab. ... Another, wearing a headscarf, was dressed as a pregnant woman, walking slowly and holding her back. Others wore thick mustaches, Palestinian keffiyehs or a long beard, typical of devout Muslims.
(November 13, 2015)
British special forces don burqas, kill ISIS leader, others: An eight-man SAS squad put on head-to-toe coverings to pose as wives of ISIS leaders, rode a Toyota pick-up truck while hiding their assault weapons and grenades under their roomy clothes. Then, as Nick Gutteridge explains in the Express,
After making their way through the town they located the house of a senior terrorist chief and used a transmitted to relay its location and coordinates to a US Air Force AWAC mission control aircraft circling thousands of feet above. The American spy plane then passed the information onto a US Reaper drone, which seconds later fired a Hellfire missile into the building, vaporising the ISIS commander and several of his henchmen. When jihadi militants heard the explosion they rushed onto the streets and discovered the burka-clad troopers, who took down several jihadis during a fierce gun battle as they fought their way to safety.
(January 18, 2016)
Protection from the zika virus: There's no evidence that Brazilian women heeded the advice of medics, but they were told to wear a burqa-like covering to avoid contracting the Zika virus. Here's one example of the many flamboyantly decked-out dancers conspicuously not covering up at in the Carnival parade in Rio de Janeiro. (February 9, 2016)
 Not wearing a burqa-like cover at Carnival in Brazil. |
Protesting the burqa on the streets of England: Thomas Dunn, 57, of Exeter, England, and a gas engineer, shares my view that the burqa should be rendered illegal in public places because it poses a security threat. He explains:
I have always been a little intimidated by people wearing burqas and since all the terrorist attacks I think the government should ban anyone from covering their faces as on CCTV it won't pick up who they are. If you see someone wearing a burqa you immediately think terrorist. It should be stopped. I have nothing against Muslim people and I'm not racist in any way, but I don't agree with people covering their faces.
But, being a man of action more than of words, he protests burqas-in-public by wearing a burqa in public. Yes, watch his transformation:
 Thomas Dunn, without and with burqa. |
So, off he went to the streets and stores of Exeter on July 30. Upon visibly putting on a burqa and walking down Queen Street at 12.30 p.m., armed police stopped him under Section 43 of the Terrorism Act of 2000, made him take off his burqa, searched him, and questioned him.
Eventually, the police released Dunn without charge. The experience has not deterred him: "What I'm doing is not illegal, and I'm definitely going to do it every week or I might increase it to a couple of times a week. I have told the police what I'm doing."
Comment: The key passage of that Section 43 reads: "A constable may stop and search a person whom he reasonably suspects to be a terrorist to discover whether he has in his possession anything which may constitute evidence that he is a terrorist."
"Reasonably suspects to be a terrorist"? Surely, that's not why Dunn was stopped. I don't ever recall a Muslim woman being stopped under that suspicion; imagine the excited charges of "Islamophobia" that would fly fast and furious.
Rather, those constables wanted to send Dunn a message that his politicking is unwelcome. And so they did. (August 1, 2017)
Australian MP wears burqa in parliament: Pauline Hanson of Australia's One Nation Party entered the Senate in a burqa and sat wearing it for twenty minutes before standing to speak and taking it off. She explained her purpose:
I'm quite happy to remove this because this is not what should belong in this parliament. If a person who wears a balaclava or a helmet in to a bank or any other building, or even on the floor of the court, they must be removed. Why is it not the same case for someone who is covering up their face and cannot be identified?
Comment: The only improvement I can suggest is next time having a male senator wear a burqa to the same effect. (Aug. 10, 2017)
