Anwar al-Awlaki, the US-born jihadist linked to the Fort Hood shootings and the Times Square bomb plot, has drawn a target on Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris, for her "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day" cartoon. Awlaki added her to the execution list, saying her "proper abode is hellfire." The FBI considers the threat "very serious" and has notified Norris. The cartoonist drew worldwide attention in April when, prompted by a network decision not to run a South Park episode that showed the Prophet Mohammed in a bear suit, she published on her web site a cartoon declaring May 20 Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.
Norris is one of eight Western cartoonists, authors and journalists al-Awlaki singles out for execution in a recent issue of Inspire, a youth-oriented English-language al-Qaeda publication that a US counterterrorism expert described as "like al-Qaeda's Tiger Beat." "The medicine prescribed by the Messenger of Allah is the execution of those involved," writes Awlaki, 39. Norris now says she regrets having made the cartoon, the New York Daily News reports.
(More Anwar al-Awlaki stories.)