The Veiled Face of Evil

Jihadist Playmate of the Month

Hello readers of Exercise in Futility. This dark robed lady is Malika El Aroud. Today I read a profile of her in The New York Times (registration required) that was quite disturbing.

"On the street, Malika El Aroud is anonymous in an Islamic black veil covering all but her eyes.

In her living room, Ms. El Aroud, a 48-year-old Belgian, wears the ordinary look of middle age: a plain black T-shirt and pants and curly brown hair. The only adornment is a pair of powder-blue slippers monogrammed in gold with the letters SEXY.

But it is on the Internet where Ms. El Aroud has distinguished herself. Writing in French under the name “Oum Obeyda,” she has transformed herself into one of the most prominent Internet jihadists in Europe."

At one point, she lived in Afghanistan under the Taliban with her first husband, who would participate in the attack on Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud just days before the September 11 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

After her husband’s mission, Ms. El Aroud was briefly detained by Mr. Massoud’s followers. Frightened, she was put in contact with Belgian authorities, who arranged for her safe passage home.

“We got her out and thought she’d cooperate with us,” said one senior Belgian intelligence official. “We were deceived.”

But here is the really outrageous part: "Now, even as Ms. El Aroud remains under constant surveillance, she is back home rallying militants on her main Internet forum and collecting more than $1,100 a month in government unemployment benefits."

I was so stunned by this revelation that I e-mailed someone at the Belgian Embassy to the United States asking how such a thing can be possible. Why is this woman collecting unemployment benefits?

It also bothered me that the reporter for the Times referred to Malika El Aroud as a "Belgian". She is not a Belgian, she is a Moroccan immigrant who happens to live in Belgium and who is having her pro-terrorist activities essentially subsidized by the very Belgian taxpayers that she so despises. I e-mailed the Times reporter asking her to explain why she designated Malika as a Belgian when she so clearly is a parasite who just happens to live in Belgium.

Another thing that annoyed me is a quote from a Claude Moniquet, president of the Brussels-based European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center. The article quotes him saying that "Malika is a role model, an icon who is bold enough to identify herself. She plays a very important strategic role as a source of inspiration. She’s very clever — and extremely dangerous." I underlined the passage above, because when you look at the picture of her above, she obviously is not bold enough to identify herself, at least when she is out walking in public or having herself photographed.

That got me to thinking about the efficacy of Belgium enacting a mask law which would essentially outlaw the wearing of a veil in public. Mask laws are on the books on a number of states in the United States, including my home state of New York. In some states the laws were enacted in response to violence by masked members of the Ku Klux Klan. As it currently stands, Malika El Aroud is allowed to advocate jihad against non-Muslims, including presumably the people of Belgium, while being subsidized by the Belgian taxpayers in her nefarious activities, all the while her identity in public being kept anonymous. It would be nice if the public could identify her by face when she ventures outside of her apartment, though if such a law were enacted she would likely avoid going outside as much as possible and not allow pictures of her face to be taken.

Still, the Times article does provide some clues as to where she might be found: "Ms. El Aroud operates from her three-room apartment that sits above a clothing shop in a working-class Brussels neighborhood where she spends her time communicating with supporters, mainly on her own forum, Minbar-SOS." And the Times article also shows a picture of her husband. It might just be enough to go on for some determined individuals to provide a little pay back for Theo Van Gogh. Not murder of course. Maybe breaking the bones in her hands so she can't type hate messages on her Internet forums anymore.

Incidentally, I logged on to the Minbar-SOS site. Unfortunately, it was all in French, but I did get a login ID and left a message on one of the threads: "Votre dieu Allah n'est pas existe. Abandonnez Islam et embrasse secular humanisme!" If you need a translation, I wrote "Your god Allah does not exist. Abandon Islam and embrace secular humanism!"