LibertasPost

Ever heard of Molly Norris?

We certainly didn’t, until very recently. A cartoonist for Seattle Weekly, Norris might have continued to labour in relative obscurity were it not for having a daring sense of humour.

Norris was upset by the seeming willingess of the western media to kowtow to Islamic censors and decided to something about it.

Some background is in order: under Islamic religious law, depictions of the Prophet Mohammed are strictly forbidden. A couple years back, a Danish newspaper ran a few cartoons about Mohammed, most of which were more stupid than insulting. Muslims around the world freaked out, holding violent protests, burning embassies and demanding the death penalty for the cartoonists and criminal laws to head-off any future outbreaks of Mo-bashing. The western media tut-tutted, but for the most part didn’t dare to republish the very cartoons that triggered such a wild reaction. Confession: as far as I know, Libertas Post didn’t either.

More recently, the Comedy Central TV channel censored the outrageous animated sitcom South Park after the show’s makers created a plot-line involving the Prophet.

In response to these examples of media self-censorship, Norris came up with the idea of an "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day." The concept was silly but inspired; if millions of people drew pictures of the sacred prophet (in the privacy of their own homes, yet), surely Muslim extremists couldn’t kill them all.

Clifford May, president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism and Islamism, picks up the thread in Realclearpolitics.com:

“The point she wanted to make was simple enough: Freedom implies the right to criticize and caricature. This freedom is now in jeopardy because a minority of Muslims believe the majority of non-Muslims can be easily intimidated. If we all stand up for freedom, Norris thought, surely freedom's enemies will back down.

What happened next: Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born cleric - once touted by the New York Times as a moderate but in fact an al-Qaeda commander who is currently hiding out in Yemen - issued a fatwa calling for Norris to be murdered by any Muslim willing and able. She quickly retracted her proposal for a day of mass Mohammed-sketching, but it was too late.”

The threat of violence was so serious, Norris went “underground” and the Seattle Weekly printed a bizarre farewell:

“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. . . .

Norris views the situation with her customary sense of the world's complexity, and absurdity. When FBI agents, on a recent visit, instructed her to always keep watch for anyone following her, she joked, "Well, at least it'll keep me from being so self-involved!" . . .”

Norris unintentionally exposed one of the major weaknesses of Islamic culture: the complete inability to tolerate criticism or even mild mockery. In the west, religious extremists might grumble about “Jesus bashing” in popular culture, but they generally refrain from trying to murder cartoonists and comedians.

The Norris case underscores a bigger issue: societies that don’t tolerate criticism tend to frown on any expression of free thought—the very force that moves the world forward. As a result, innovation, progress and discovery are stifled. Freethinkers run for cover (or are murdered) as mindless conformity becomes the collective norm. The chances such a society will produce an Einstein, Edison, Martin Luther, Martin Luther King, Bill Gates or—hell—a Molly Norris are close to nil.

All of which is a very roundabout way of simply saying, “Molly, we support free speech and we support you.”

As should anyone concerned about the threat of religious violence and growing media self-censorship.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/photocology/2653601741/

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Interested in seeing the original “blasphemous” cartoons that stirred up all this trouble in the first place? Go to http://www.jihadwatch.org/2006/02/spencer-cartoon-rage-vs-freedom-of-spe... and make up your own mind whether these pictures are worth killing for.