A POSITIVE SPIN ON ISLAM

U.S.: NONVIOLENT COMIC BOOKS SEND POSITIVE MESSAGE ABOUT ISLAM
By Marie-Helene Rousseau
NEW YORK, Mar. 20, 2008 (IPS/GIN) -- A U.S.-educated Kuwaiti academic has begun using fanciful comic books to counter the negative stereotypes of Islam that circulate so freely these days in the U.S.
In one story, visitors who arrived recently at a New York airport use their superpowers to stop two planes from colliding.

“Our part of the world was lacking modern-day heroes," said publisher Naïf Al-Mutawa, a Columbia Business School graduate who also holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology. The Kuwaiti academic is hoping to send both U.S. and Middle Eastern readers a positive message about Islam.
Al-Mutawa's superheroes are a multicultural gang, united by belief in a faith that routs evil. Each superhero embodies one of the 99 qualities that the Quran, the Islamic holy book, attributes to God. There's Jabbar the Powerful, and Noora, whose name means light. Noora can see the light and darkness in everyone.

English and Arabic editions of "The 99" are sold in Middle East and in the United States, via al-Mutawa's company, the Teshkeel Media Group.
His books are among dozens of new Islamic-influenced comics and graphic novels circulating in the United States, which is home to 6 million Muslims.
The message in these graphic novels varies widely. For example, in Bosch Fawstin’s forthcoming graphic novel, "The Infidel,” the Bronx-born son of Albanian Muslims makes some Muslims the villains.

Fawstin, 37, calls himself an ex-Muslim. He said he wasn't raised to be religious, beyond going to mosque once a year and avoiding pork. He attended art school at night, published his first graphic novel in 2004 and, inspired by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, began writing "The Infidel."

The graphic novel focuses on two Muslim brothers, one who embraces fundamentalism and the other who battles extremism. Villains are killed in ways that readers may find disturbing, he admitted. "When I show some people the sketches, they turn away," Fawstin said.
In contrast to Fawstin’s protagonists, Al-Mutawa's superheroes battle enemies nonviolently, countering a Western image of Islam as inherently violent.

Al-Mutawa, 36, fell in love with comics during childhood summers at camp in New Hampshire. After college, he worked as a translator for torture survivors and decided that Muslims needed to have more positive role models. That led to his founding of Teshkeel Media, which takes its name from the symbols in Arabic script indicating pronunciation. Besides "The 99," the company also distributes Arabic translations of other comic books, including the classic "Archie" series.

Other religions have also figured more prominently in the comics of recent years. "Buddha," the comic book series about Buddha's life, by the late Japanese artist Osamu Tezuka, was reprinted in hardcover in 2003. "Devi," published by British-based Virgin Comics in 2006, offers a contemporary spin on the story of the Hindu warrior goddess. In the renowned "Blankets" (2003), novelist Craig Thompson illustrated his disenchantment with evangelical Christianity. The same themes are also creeping into mainstream comics: For example, a 2002 edition of "New X-Men" introduced Dust, an Afghani Muslim superheroine clad in a body-covering burqa.

Religion is a new topic for comics, said Greg Garrett, author of a book on the subject, "Holy Superheroes: Exploring Faith and Spirituality in Comic Books."
"Most comics, like most of our popular culture, homogenized their characters and edited out religious distinctions," he said. As recently as the 1980s, readers were startled to see X-Men character Kitty Pryde wearing a Star of David. Muslims were nonexistent, vilified or stereotyped, he suggested.

But because religion is a force in current events, it naturally informs comics, said Preston Hunter, the webmaster of Adherents.com, a 10-year-old statistical Web site that Hunter said had a database of the religions of 2,000 comic book characters.
Some adherents say that Superman, for example, though hailing from the planet Ka-El, was raised in a Methodist household. When Christian televangelist scandals made the news, many comic book villains appeared as Protestant preachers.

"The 99" is an amalgam of Eastern and Western ideas, said Al-Mutawa, drawing both on Western superheroes' tendency to act individually and Eastern comics' reliance on teamwork. Characters work in teams of at least three, to solve problems together. Three is a significant number for another reason: It avoids offending Muslims who may have a problem with a man and woman being alone together. The comics won’t please all conservatives, however, seeing as not all the superheroines wear headscarves.
While raising funds to start his company, Al-Mutawa once showed potential investors another option available to Muslim kids: The sticker books that a Hamas supporter was selling depicted suicide bombers.