In the stand off at Islamabad’s Red Mosque, the Islamist cleric and leader Maulana Abdul Aziz was apparently caught trying to escape while dressed as a woman — or at least dressed how women are obliged to dress according his way of thinking. From Pakistan Dawn:

But perhaps the biggest blow to the heavily armed militants, who on Tuesday had vowed to continue their ‘jihad´ till the last drop of blood, came when their leader and chief khateeb Maulana Abdul Aziz was caught while trying to escape in disguise, wearing a burqa.

“Yes, I confirm that Maulana Abdul Aziz has been arrested along with his wife while he was trying to escape wearing burqa,’ Deputy Commissioner Islamabad Chaudhry Muhammad Ali said. Religious Affairs Minister Ijaz-ul-Haq later justified the arrest of the cleric´s wife, saying that she was one of the key figures behind every thing that had happened there, and even on Wednesday had tried to prevent women students from leaving Jamia Hafsa.

Within minutes of his arrest, Maulana Aziz was whisked away by intelligence operatives to an undisclosed place.

Known for his firebrand speeches, calls for jihad and open threats in Friday sermons about having a brigade of suicide bombers inside Lal Masjid, Maulana Aziz tried to slip away by posing as one of the 50-odd women students who had offered to surrender.

But for an eagle-eyed woman head constable of the Special Branch, Maulana Aziz would have managed to slip away along with his wife.

A security official told Dawn that head constable Maryam was standing close to the outer gate observing all the women who were moving towards the parked buses when she got suspicious of the way two of the women were behaving. All other women were allowed to pass, but burqa-clad Maulana Aziz was stopped and Maryam surprised him by asking his name and he did not respond. It was soon revealed that behind the black burqa was the man, who for the last six months had been keeping the entire administration and the country in a state of panic.

It was ironic that a man who rarely got himself photographed was now making headlines with his image splashed on television channels showing him in an all-covering black burqa.

So embarrassing was the revelation for most radical and moderate Islamists that no one was prepared to justify the act. However, his younger brother and perhaps the more militant of the two, Maulana Abdul Rasheed Ghazi, remained defiant till the filing of this report and even expressed his annoyance over Maulana Aziz´s attempt to escape. (Some private TV channels reported late in the night that he had agreed to surrender).

But for most other people in Islamabad, and in other parts of the country, the incident was used to make fun of the militant clerics. Throughout the evening, jokes were doing the rounds, with people feeling a marked reduction in tension in the city.

Ev’rybody knows
That Baby’s got new clothes
But lately I see her ribbons and her bows
Have fallen from her curls.

You have to wonder if he broke like a little girl.

It hasn’t exactly been a banner week for the image of the jihadists, when you also consider the miserable failure of the various attempts to butcher innocent people in Britain. All those years of medical school for nothing! On the other hand, it’s been a pretty good week for Scotsmen.

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Addendum: Click here for Van Morrison, on YouTube, doing one of his peerless live renditions of Just Like A Woman.

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