On September 30, 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten ran cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that sparked outrage in the Muslim world. “By 23 April 2006 bin Laden had formulated his response to the cartoons crisis in the form of a fatwa reminiscent of that issued by Ayatollah Khomeini against the British writer Salman Rushdie in 1990. Bin Laden urged fellow Muslims ‘to punish the crusader-journalists who have committed horrible crimes against our Prophet Muhammad…the umma [Muslim community] has reached a consensus that he who offends or degrades the messenger must be killed.’ “
– Abdel Bari Atwan, The Secret History of al Qaeda, Page 277