When cartoonist Molly Norris brought the wrath of Islamic fundamentalists everywhere upon her after unwittingly initiating Everybody Draw Muhammad Day five years ago, she went into hiding on the advice of the FBI and hasn’t been seen or heard from publicly since. Bosch Fawstin brought similar wrath upon himself for winning the recent Draw Muhammad contest in Garland, Texas, at an event where a pair of jihadists were shot and killed trying to assassinate those inside, much like the massacre at the Charlie Hebdo offices in France. Not only did Fawstin not go into hiding, but he has just released his most aggressively anti-Islamic work yet: the graphic novel The Infidel #3.
Besides being a former Muslim himself, award-winning cartoonist Bosch Fawstin is a FrontPage contributing artist and the author/illustrator of, among other works, The Infidel series of graphic novels. Full disclosure: Fawstin is also a friend of mine, whom I have previously written about and interviewed here on FrontPage Mag. In that interview, Fawstin observed that “comics have been as truthless and as gutless as any corner of pop culture about Islam and Jihad since 9/11.” That can’t be said about The Infidel, particularly the latest installment, released today.
A story within a story, The Infidel series is about the escalating conflict between twin brothers Killian Duke and Salaam Duka, whose lives veer in polar opposite directions after the 9/11 attacks. While Salaam submits fully to Islam, Killian (who curiously resembles his creator Fawstin) responds to the atrocity by creating a counter-jihad superhero comic book called Pigman. As Killian says, “For me, there is before 9/11 and after 9/11. Seeing fellow Americans jumping to their deaths from the Towers brought out in me... a desire to kill. But I’m not a soldier. I’m an artist.” This mirrors what Fawstin himself says: “This story has allowed me to say all that I’ve wanted to say about this post-9/11 world in the best way I can say it, through comics.”
So Killian, like Fawstin, fights back in his art. In his comic, Killian’s protagonist Frank Warner watches the Twin Towers fall on 9/11 and begins “thinking about all the terrible things that must be done to those who had a good day on 9/11.” He dons a costume made of pigskin, which Muslims consider unclean, to become his alter ego Pigman and take on jihad. He confronts al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden face-to-face in a cave hideout (The Infidel #1 was completed just prior to bin Laden’s death). The result is an action-packed catharsis.
In The Infidel #2, jihadists strike another terrible blow against a symbolic target of the United States. Instead of wringing his hands and wondering “Why do they hate us?” as the Western cultural elites tended to do after 9/11, Pigman decides to hit the enemy tit-for-tat, or “an icon for an icon,” as Fawstin puts it. The result is a devastating retaliatory blow against the followers of Islam.
In The Infidel #3, subtitled “Reprisal,” the clash of civilization still rages on the cultural and political fronts – and Islam is winning. The President kowtows to Saudi overlords while Congress considers a bipartisan condemnation of Pigman for doing what the government should be doing – protecting American citizens. “If your culture was worthy of you, there wouldn’t be a need for Pigman,” his archenemy SuperJihad tells him.
In addition to waging violent war against jihadists, Frank Warner also battles their ideology. He writes a book called The Post-Islamic World, in which he shows how the destruction of Islam will allow the formerly Muslim survivors of that world to rejoin civilization, with their erstwhile enemy Israel as the role model for freedom and prosperity in the Middle East. Accused of being irrationally anti-Islam, Warner replies that “there’s nothing irrational about opposing evil. Being anti-Islam is rational.”
Meanwhile, Warner’s creator Killian Duke is in court acting in his own defense against charges brought by a CAIR-like organization called Your Muslim Friends. When the prosecution tries to paint Killian as a violent Islamophobe – “Mr. Duke’s Pigman is a direct assault on Muslim feelings” – he shatters the illusion of Islam as a religion of peace by giving the jury the eye-opening full context of the famous Koranic verse, “Whoever kills a human being shall be looked upon as though he has killed all mankind.” He then uses his closing remarks to make a spirited defense of freedom of speech in the face of efforts by Your Muslim Friends to criminalize any criticism of Islam.
Killian continues drawing his comics, in which Pigman explicitly defends “truth, justice, and the American way,” ruthlessly exterminating jihadis from Iran to Egypt to Saudi Arabia to “Palestine” like a force of nature. Meanwhile, Killian’s Muslim brother Salaam is being pressured by his imam to silence the cartoonist permanently. The conclusion of this installment is a shocking cliffhanger – meaning (Infidel fans will be happy to hear) that there apparently will be an Infidel #4.
After winning the Draw Muhammad exhibition in Texas, at which would-be terrorists proved the very necessity for such an event, Fawstin was added to the Southern Poverty Law Center’s ever-expanding list of hate groups. Of course, Fawstin is not a “group” and the SPLC is itself a hate group that has aligned itself with anti-free speech jihad. “This is a battle,” he declared.
“We have to say: ‘No more. We can have exhibitions, because we are a free people in the civilized world,’” he said. “We’re supposed to be Americans, who love freedom, who fight evil and have no problem saying so.”
It’s hard to blame Mollie Norris for not sticking her neck out, with jihadists eager to put a knife to it. The reality is that the threats she received were serious and murderous – victims like Theo van Gogh vouch for that. It takes someone of serious conviction and courage to stand in defense of free speech in the face of Islamic butchers determined to silence blasphemers and apostates. It takes an Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Nonie Darwish, a Geert Wilders, a Bosch Fawstin to do that. The least that the rest of us can do is stand with them.