A martyr in drag

Last week, we brought you a female pharaoh who dressed like a man. This week, we have a Pakistani cleric caught hiding under a burqa.

Islamabad’s Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, has long been both a place supported by government officials and a center of radical ideology. In recent months the conflict between those two realities erupted, with something of a localized rebellion against the government, complete with murders, kidnappings and the capture of a government building by some of the thousands of students at the mosque and its adjacent schools.

A government crackdown this week reached a crescendo with the deaths of almost two dozen at the mosque.

Although hundreds have given themselves up in exchange for a ride home, scores of men holed up inside declared that they “want only martyrdom.”

Women were given amnesty; Lal Masjid ringleader Maulana Abdul Aziz was discovered among them.

“We caught Abdul Aziz when he was trying to escape the mosque clad in a burqa. He did not offer any resistance,” said a Pakistani security official involved in the capture.

“He was the last in a group of women all wearing the same clothes. He was wearing a burqa that also covered his eyes,” the official said.

So how did the keen Pakistani police sniff out the wily outlaw?

“Our men spotted his unusual demeanor,” explained the official. “The rest of the girls looked like girls but he was taller and had a pot belly.”