These photographs conclusively validate the concern that Dr. Daniel Pipes has had about the security risk that burqas represent. For the last six years, Dr. Pipes has been detailing the number of common criminals and Islamist terrorists who have robbed jewelry stories and peeped into women's bathrooms while wearing burqas, or who have blown themselves and others up from under the protective cover of a mere woman's shroud.
In December, 2009, a suicide bomber dressed in a full veil and abaya gained access to a ceremony attended by government officials and killed 19 people, including three cabinet ministers. In February, 2010, a female suicide bomber killed 54 Shia pilgrims in Baghdad. She was dressed in an abaya, which police said allowed her to hide an explosive device. In December, 2010 in Pakistan, a woman wearing a burqa threw a grenade and detonated an explosive vest at a U.N. security checkpoint, killing 41 people.
This is not just happening in Muslim-majority countries or in war zones.
In August, 2010, a man wearing a burqa robbed a bank in Silver Spring, Maryland. In January, 2011, a man wearing niqab (a face veil) attempted to rob a bank in Philadelphia. Three years earlier, also in Philadelphia, three men dressed as Muslim women stuck up a Bank of America branch. One of the men shot and killed a police officer during their getaway.
Why are burqas allowed in public? Or rather, why don't we view them as potentially suspicious as opposed to a religious custom which we infidels are obligated to honor and revere?
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We in the West must strategize ways to protect those Muslims and ex-Muslims who choose to assimilate and to prosecute those who are violent towards them.
