Dueling Fatwas

by Daniel Pipes
October 6, 2010

https://www.legal-project.org/807/dueling-fatwas

Excerpt:

The topic opens with South Park, an iconoclastic adult cartoon program on Comedy Central, which in April mocked the prohibition on depicting the Islamic prophet Muhammad. An obscure website, RevolutionMuslim.com (whose proprietor was subsequently arrested on terrorism-related charges), responded by threatening the show's writers, Trey Parker and Matt Stone. Panicked, Comedy Central censored further mention of Muhammad.

Enter Molly Norris, a cartoonist at the Seattle Weekly, who showed solidarity with Parker and Stone by posting a facetious "Everyone Draw Mohammed Day" appeal on Facebook, hoping that a host of caricaturists would "counter Comedy Central's message about feeling afraid." To Norris's surprise, dismay, and confusion, others took her idea seriously, prompting Facebook campaigns for and against her "day" and a decision by the Pakistani government temporarily to block Facebook. Norris disowned her initiative, apologized for it, and even befriended the local Council on American-Islamic Relations representative, to little avail.

Anwar al-Awlaki, an Islamist leader in Yemen, responded in July by issuing a death sentence on Norris, inaccurately but pungently called a fatwa. On consulting with the police, Norris in September not only went underground but "went ghost" and disappeared entirely, abandoning her name and her profession.

Awlaki's "fatwa" on Norris, however, is only half the story. The other half concerns a U.S. government "fatwa" on Awlaki.

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