'We Wish Her the Best'? Cartoonist, Threatened by Islamists, Disappears

On the Advice of the FBI, Cartoonist Molly Norris Disappears From View

Her work won’t be in Seattle Weekly anymore, or anywhere else.

By Mark D. Fefer

You may have noticed that Molly Norris’ comic is not in the paper this week. That’s because there is no more Molly.

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.

I completely missed the Molly Norris fatwa issued by Anwar al-Awlaki which was (naturally) barely reported by our ever-vigilant media.

Norris views the situation with her customary sense of the world’s complexity, and absurdity.

Mistake. There is nothing complex about a death threat against a critic of Islamic censorship.

When FBI agents, on a recent visit, instructed her to always keep watch for anyone following her, she responded, “Well, at least it’ll keep me from being so self-involved!” It was, she says, the first time the agents managed a smile. She likens the situation to cancer–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.

Why liken it to cancer when it is what it is — Islam?

We’re hoping the religious bigots go into full and immediate remission, and we wish her the best.

These people can’t be serious … because these people can’t be serious.