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150G knife awaits Muhammad cartoonist

Absolutely not. Swedish artist Lars Vilks has no regrets about his 2007 drawing depicting the prophet Muhammad as a stray dog.

Absolutely not.

Swedish artist Lars Vilks has no regrets about his 2007 drawing depicting the prophet Muhammad as a stray dog.

"It's a part of the game you play when you are an artist," he said yesterday while visiting Philadelphia. "Now there would be a terrorist waiting around every bush. I don't know if I can ever live my life as I had done."

His work, however, has come with a hefty price: A fatwah was declared on the 64-year-old Vilks and $150,000 is said to be promised to the assassin who uses a knife to end his life, the artist said. Any other method would get about $100,000, he said.

Swedish police warned him to change his identity and go into hiding, but Vilks refused.

Earlier this year, however, the threat became real and one of the bounty hunters seeking Vilks was a blond woman with cornrows from Pennsburg, Montgomery County. Federal authorities arrested Colleen LaRose, a/k/a "Jihad Jane," one of several wannabe terrorists who planned to murder Vilks.

"Who would actually suspect a blond woman?" Vilks asked. "You turn your back on a blond woman - you expect a bearded man. Terrorists with a new face."

Vilks' scheduled talk at the Union League yesterday was canceled because of security concerns and another discussion was nixed in Ottawa. He's on a seven-day tour of the United States and Canada.

The costs to protect him in North America end up being "too difficult and too expensive," he said. But at a recent talk in Oslo, Norway, only two police officers were needed, and they were able to kick out four Muslim protesters.

In May, however, his lecture in front of about 250 people at Sweden's Uppsala University turned chaotic when a man ambushed Vilks at the lectern as he highlighted censored artwork.

The mayhem was captured by the school's scheduled videotaping of the talk and shows police spritzing pepper spray on aggressive members of the crowd shouting chants.

"It was very fast, you know," Vilks said. "Suddenly I saw it. It got out of control. I couldn't really say what happened because I saw this guy coming toward me. I thought he hit me."

In fact, a security guard threw himself between the man and Vilks, who was then spirited away. The only injury that night befell his hipster glasses.

Two weeks later, two men tried to burn down his house, believing Vilks to be sleeping inside, he said. He was at his partner's house nearby. There was a small fire, but the would-be arsonists set themselves on fire as well and, in their panic, left behind their ID, phone numbers and other identifying markers, Vilks said.

They were sentenced to two years in jail and in court said that Vilks was "Islam's enemy," according to the artist.