Bosch Fawstin, a former Muslim who won the ‘Draw Mohammed’ cartoon contest attacked by terrorists last May in Garland, Texas, says that his drawing has been removed from eBay.
According to this report, the artist won $12,500 in prize money at the May 3, 2015, event, sponsored by Pamela Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), for his drawing.
Bosch Fawstin, left, is presented with his cheque by Dutch politician Geert Wilders and Pamela Geller.
Own a piece of history. Own the Cartoon at the Center of a Terrorist Attack.
On his blog, the artist wrote:
Before eBay removed my listing on a ‘technicality’, the current highest bid for it was $10,000 in only three days.
His text for the auction read:
Shortly after my Mohammad cartoon was announced as the winner of Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer’s AFDI Draw Mohammad contest event and exhibition in Garland Texas, two jihadists came to try to murder the approximately 200 people who attended the event. They would have succeeded if not for a heroic, sharp-shooting policeman who blew their heads off before they could even enter the building.
The bodies of the gunmen outside the community centre that hosted the cartoon contest they ambushed.
The attack and event became an international news story and my life has never been the same since. Following the attack, I received more death threats than I ever had, even though I’ve been drawing Mohammad for years. But despite the danger, I want to continue drawing Mohammad. These days, there are fewer cartoonists willing to draw ‘He Who Must Not Be Drawn’, and, for me, that’s just more reason to do so, especially in a world where Free Speech is under siege from all sides.
What kind of world would it be if no one drew Mohammad? The Islamic world. I never want to live in that world, and drawing Mohammad every so often is how I personally keep that world at bay.
My winning Mohammad cartoon explicitly spells out why I draw Mohammad in the first place. I never set out to draw Mohammad until the Danish cartoonists who did so were threatened with death over it. Though their Mohammad cartoons were blamed for inciting Islamic violence, in truth it’s Islamic violence which incites Mohammad cartoons.
My winning Mohammad cartoon led me to an event where I could have died if jihadists had their way, so it’s the most significant and most famous cartoon I’ve ever done – and might ever do. My cartoon became a symbol of Free Speech because drawing Mohammad has now become the most daring way of exercising one’s right to Free Speech in today’s world. Based on what some have written about it, it has become one of the most important pieces of art in recent memory.
For example, Mark Steyn wrote the following about my winning Mohammad cartoon:
‘It’s less about Mohammed than about the prohibition against drawing Mohammed – and the willingness of a small number of Muslims to murder those who do, and a far larger number of Muslims both enthusiastic and quiescent to support those who kill. Mr.Fawstin understands the remorseless logic of one-way multiculturalism – that it leads to the de facto universal acceptance of Islamic law.’
Own a famous piece of art that’s become a symbol of Free Speech, an image of which Freedom-lovers helped spread like wildfire on the Internet. Own a piece of original art that was at the heart of the first physical jihad attack on Free Speech in America. The image ended up on billboards, t-shirts, even coffee cups. It’s a newsworthy piece of art that 99.9% of the news media outside of Fox News never showed, and the original is now available for sale to the highest bidder.
Hat tip: Trevor Blake