In a piece for USA Today on August 2, Stephen Prothero, a Boston University professor and CNN blogger, laments the burqa bans being debated in Europe and mocks those who harbor concerns — hilariously unfounded in his view — about the “possibility of cross-dressing criminals concealed behind burqas starting a spate of bank robberies from London to Rome.” “To paraphrase The Shadow,” he writes, “who knows what evil lurks behind the jihab?”
“Possibility”? Besides failing to enlighten readers about what a “jihab” is, Prothero blissfully ignores the litany of terrorist attacks and mundane crimes, including many “from London to Rome,” carried out by men in face-covering Islamic veils and compiled by Daniel Pipes. More unfortunate for Prothero’s article, two stories appeared soon after to underscore the security threat of burqas and niqabs — and to demonstrate the danger right here in the U.S.
First, on August 10, a robbery took place at a bank in Silver Spring, Maryland, with the suspect reportedly disguising himself in Islamic garb:
Police said the man who robbed a TD Bank branch on Briggs Chaney Road about 4:20 p.m. Tuesday was wearing a “long black burqa over his face.”
You chose to disrespect the faith you claim to uphold. … People in Philadelphia cross the street to avoid Muslim women because of you.
To Western eyes, two of them became hijabi — Muslim women who cover themselves — by pulling on full-length black burqas. They became, in a sense, invisible. The bank sat inside a busy supermarket, where shoppers would surely notice the two monoliths moving among them; but just as surely, those shoppers would pass by with eyes cast down, or aside, or beyond. They may be drawn for a moment by the sheer otherness of the hijabi, but would dependably look away with a twinge of awkward guilt for having noticed.
January 21, 2011, Update: A new Islamist Watch blog post surveys recent burqa banditry in the U.S. and finds that TD Bank appears to be preferentially targeted.