What Missing Molly Norris Wrote To Anorak About Everybody Draw Mohammed Day
MOLLY Norris, a self-confessed “frat boy at heart”, put out there the idea of “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day”. The internet went nuts. Drawing Mohammed simply to cause offence is “spiteful and prejudiced“.
Molly wrote to us:
Freedom without responsibility is not prudent. I wish my cartoon would have only been seen as satire about a particular, historic censorship in America. But instead it took on a life of its own. Such is the internet!
Now Molly Norris is missing. The Seattle Weekly reports:
You may have noticed that Molly Norris’ comic is not in the paper this week. That’s because there is no more Molly.
Rubbed out, like a bad cartoon?
The gifted artist is alive and well, thankfully. But on the insistence of top security specialists at the FBI, she is, as they put it, “going ghost”: moving, changing her name, and essentially wiping away her identity. She will no longer be publishing cartoons in our paper or in City Arts magazine, where she has been a regular contributor. She is, in effect, being put into a witness-protection program—except, as she notes, without the government picking up the tab. It’s all because of the appalling fatwa issued against her this summer, following her infamous ”Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” cartoon.
Horrific.
She was on Anwar al-Awlaki’s execution list in July.
The Yemeni-American cleric in Yemen called for Norris’s execution in English-language al-Qaeda magazine, Inspire, calling her a “prime target of assassination.”
Virginia Imam Anwar Al-Awlaki Hails The ‘Hero’ Nidal Hasan’s Lap-Dances For Allah
Her words at the time make the lastest news even more notable:
Personally I can feel afraid of Muslims because I really have no idea if in their hearts they hate non-Muslims. There are so many interpretations of the religion that I hear told — sometimes it is a very extreme translation (that’s the scary part, the radicals that believe that Westerners should die), then at other times it sounds more peaceful.
I hope for the sake of this country that moderate Muslims will speak out with everyone else against any violent members of that or any other religion. That way I would know that there is a difference. Maybe this cartoon I made, this fictional poster of “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day!” had such a wildfire effect because it is finally time for Muslims and non-Muslims to understand one another more.
Spotter: Jim Treacher
Posted: 16th, September 2010 | In: Key Posts, Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
