Given Away By A Pot Belly!

Ah, how Maulana Abdul Aziz must rue all those parathays he's had through the years. He was captured while trying to escape from the government siege of the lal masjid complex by slipping out with a group of young girls in burqas. Alas, some sharp-eyed officers spotted something suspicious:

Another security official told AFP that the cleric had been picked out because of his "unusual" demeanour."The rest of the girls looked like girls, but he was taller and had a pot belly," the official said.

I wish one of the news channels had caught this on tape.

Edit: Meanwhile, one Lahori wit has asked, 'Which Auntie Do You Condemn The Most? Auntie Shamim or Auntie Maulana?'

When the policewoman who first spotted the suspicious bulge of the Maulana's midsection moved to question her, (sorry, I mean him), the burqa-clad students with him protested that "Our Auntie is very ill!" This has led to the Pakistani blogosphere dubbing him 'Auntie Maulana'. The term is all the more amusing because 'Auntie Shamim' was what the lal masjid burqa-clad vice squad had dubbed the woman they had abducted and accused of running a prostitution service.

The consensus seems to be that Auntie Maulana is the more contemptible of the two.

IZ