Fatwa Sends Seattle Cartoonist Into Hiding

A Seattle cartoonist has been forced to change her name and leave town over the “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” cartoon she drew this summer. “You may have noticed that Molly Norris’ comic is not in the paper this week,” the Seattle Weekly's editor wrote. “That’s because there is no more Molly. … On the insistence of top security specialists at the FBI, she is, as they put it, ‘going ghost.’”

Anwar al-Awlaki, the notorious American-born al-Qaeda cleric living in Yemen, issued a fatwa against Norris for her cartoon, which depicted random objects declaring themselves to be Mohammed, referencing the absurdity of the South Park scandal (click here for more on that). Norris likens the fatwa against her to cancer, the Weekly's editor writes: “It might basically be nothing, it might be urgent and serious, it might go away and never return, or it might pop up again when she least expects it.” (More Prophet Mohammed stories.)