Molly Norris Does Salman Rushdie; or, Among the Disappeared

As you may recall, a number of months back we all experienced a pair of rolling brouhahas with regard to "offending" the Islamofascists. And both were related. The first was the flap that developed when the Comedy Channel censored South Park's attempt to show an image of the prophet on one of their over-the-top satirical episodes, fearing reprisals. The second--a response to the first--was the call of Seattle-area cartoonist Molly Norris to hold a "Draw Mohammed" day (that's the way she spelled it) to show these latter-day Nazis we gave not a hoot about their dictates--in our own country at least.

The result of the South Park flap was pretty instantaneous. Comedy Channel refused to rescind the censorship. And not long after an (apparently) lone Islamofascist wing-nut attempted to plant a crude anti-personnel bomb on Times Square not far from a Comedy Channel-affiliated facility. Guess that shows you that self-censorship really works, eh?

Meanwhile, as we noted (disapprovingly) in this blog, Norris instantly backed off her call for drawing Mohammed--after going out of her way to get her 15 minutes of fame--realizing she may have carved out more dangerous publicity for herself than she'd anticipated. We now learn that Molly is now among the "disappeared," apparently entering something like the FBI's witness protection program, à la Salman Rushdie in the UK. She no longer exists, according to James Taranto in the Wall Street Journal:

"There is no more Molly," reports Seattle Weekly. Molly Norris, formerly a cartoonist for the alternative paper, has gone into hiding. At the suggestion of the FBI, "she is, as they put it, 'going ghost': moving, changing her name, and essentially wiping away her identity."

Why? Because, as the New York Times reports, imam Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Islamic supremacist who is himself in hiding in Yemen, issued a fatwa in July declaring that Norris "should be taken as a prime target of assassination" because of a cartoon she drew two months earlier titled "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day."

Well, isn't that special? Exercise your constitutional right to free speech right here in the U.S. and, voilá, you're disappeared to save you from execution murder by peace-loving Islamofascists. Did I say peace-loving? Taranto points out the following:

In October 2001, by the way, the New York Times described al-Awlaki, who then ran a mosque in Virginia, as someone who "is held up as a new generation of Muslim leader capable of merging East and West." How's that working out?

He continues to connect the dots:

Here's another question: Where is President Obama? Last month, speaking to a mostly Muslim audience at the White House, the president strongly defended the right of another imam held up as a moderate to build a mosque adjacent to Ground Zero. The next day, and again at a press conference last week, Obama said he was merely standing up for the First Amendment. As far as we recall, it's the only time Barack Obama has ever stood up for anybody's First Amendment rights.

Don't hold your breath, Jim. As people have begun to figure out, academic theorist Obama at least vaguely ascribes to neo-post-colonialism (or whatever its current nomenclature is) that blames the US--which is, of course, merely an extension of Old Colonial Europe--as deserving whatever it gets from the third world as punishment for its alleged past sins. (Who elected this dude?)

In any event, don't hold your breath for a Presidential intervention. As a result,

Now Molly Norris, an American citizen, is forced into hiding because she exercised her right to free speech. Will President Obama say a word on her behalf? Does he believe in the First Amendment for anyone other than Muslims?

Ironically, Norris tried to make amends for her "blasphemy" within Seattle's Muslim community. But hey, who cares, figure the Islamofascists. Let's kill her anyway. She's only another infidel. One commentator to this sub-story, posting to an apparently moderate Muslim-oriented blog, has it about right:

She should have stuck to her original position because it doesn't matter at all that she backtracked and tried to make peace. They still want to kill her. That's one of the difficulties with islam - they're going to chop your head off anyway, so why bother trying to make nice??

A surprising number of commentators at various sites actually blame Norris for the "provocation," claiming that just because she has the right to free speech doesn't mean that she can abuse it. Excuse me? Employing this logic, could we all agree that just because some provocateurs "have the right" to build a gigantic mosque within a stone's throw of Ground Zero in New York city that doesn't mean that they can abuse New Yorkers by actually building it?

These clowns are all fascists hiding behind the mask of religion. Their apologists are not much better and are in fact probably worse, since they're what shrinkologists call "enablers." We need to return the favor, protect our citizens starting NOW, and start issuing fatwahs against these murderers themselves. We have the right to do so, too, under a little known provision of our Constitution. (NB: Ron Paul, not usually one of our favorite people, seems to have figured this one out.)

Please refer to our earlier post on the danger to our Arizona citizens posed by the dominance of Mexican drug cartel activity along a major interstate--one the current adminstration addresses by posting signs warning families to be on the lookout. Whose country is this anyway?

(Postscript: Speaking of the aforementioned Rushdie. In spite of his well-known travails re: the Islamofascists' fatwah-death threat, this clueless socialist has yet to learn. He's vocally supporting the building of the Ground Zero mosque. I could go on about this kind of "intellectual class" lunacy at length, but you already know the rant.)