Hidden benefits

COVERING a woman’s face (as well as her body) is said by some devout Muslims to protect her virtue. But the full veil has long lent itself to other purposes. In one tale of “One Thousand and One Nights”, a tome of traditional Arabic stories, Prince Ardashir is slipped into the bedroom of Princess Hayat al-Nufus by her nurse, who veils him and teaches him a female gait; in another story King Shah Zaman catches the wife of his brother, King Shahryar, cavorting with 20 slave girls, ten of whom prove, when disrobed, to be well-endowed males.

Of late the niqab, or full veil, has been used less cheerfully. On December 13th Yemeni authorities said its police had shot dead several al-Qaeda militants who were disguised as fully veiled women. On December 1st a black-veiled woman stabbed to death an American teacher in an Abu Dhabi shopping centre.