Osama bin Laden grew up in Saudi Arabia, where almost all men wear a shimagh or a ghutra (a white or checkered square cotton cloth held in place by a black cord) on their head. However, contemporary photos of him invariably show him wearing a white turban.
Why the change in headgear? Is he trying to show solidarity with a particular religious, ethnic, or national group? Trying to start a new fashion trend? Or perhaps he just wanted to blend in with the locals to avoid detection, and would have taken up the ghutra again had he been able to return to his native land?
I think this is barking up the right tree; Pushtus aren’t Arabs & don’t wear gutras.
There’s also a theory out there (don’t know how much stock to put in it) that bin Laden is trying to set himself up as a unifying Mahdi & the headdress would be more appealing I suppose to Shia than a Wahhabist Saudi headdress.
Also I think White Sox caps are in short supply in Peshawar this time of year.
As I understand it, he is dressed as a Yemeni. That would explain the headgear and the curved dagger in the belt.
Yemen is the ancestral home of the Saudis. (At least, so it is commonly said.) Things and people from Yemen are thought more simple, old-fashioned and pure.
Conversely, the gutra and thobe is the Saudi national uniform. Wearing it is required in schools and most public offices. Rejecting it is a way of rejecting the Saudi government.
