Story highlights Khalid Albaih, a political cartoonist in Qatar, drew the Kaepernick cartoon

Celebrities, including Dave Chappelle, have been seen wearing T-shirts with the design

(CNN) A political cartoon of Colin Kaepernick kneeling with his Afro in the shape of a black fist has gone viral.

But the illustration -- which has been adopted by sports fans, civil rights activists and celebrities -- comes from an unlikely artist.

Khalid Albaih, a Romania-born Sudanese artist living in Qatar, is renowned throughout the Middle East for addressing controversial political and social issues, including government corruption, the war in Yemen and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

However, his Kaepernick cartoon tackles a far more distant issue: American civil liberties.

Kaepernick, a former quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, sparked a national conversation during the 2016 NFL football season when he refused to stand for the national anthem. Instead, the footballer knelt in protest of police shootings of African-American men and other social injustices faced by black people in the United States.