(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - The world’s first team of Islamic superheroes?That’s one way of looking at The 99, a comic book published out of the Middle East and receiving global recognition, including some rather high-ranking kudos from none other than U.S. President Barack Obama.
But the creator of the comic — which has inspired a theme park in Kuwait as well as an upcoming animated TV series — stresses that his superheroes are no more overtly Qur’an-based than Superman is overtly biblical.
“These superheroes are inspired by Islam . . . but the storylines are secular,” says Dr. Naif Al-Mutawa, the licensed clinical psychologist who took a detour into the comic-book world in 2006 when the first issue of The 99 was released.
Al-Mutawa, 40, who will be lecturing at the University of Calgary on June 1, notes that while Superman is based on a biblical archetype,” — the son sent to Earth by a father from the heavens to save mankind — he’s seldom thought of as a Bible-inspired superhero.
“There’s no mention of the Bible or Jesus in the storylines,” says Al-Mutawa. “Instead, the stories are based on values the whole of humanity shares.”
The 99 has similar designs, Al-Mutawa points out.
“This brand is globally appealing,” he says. “There’s no way of telling who is of what religion by looking at the characters, except for one or two. A couple of the women wear the head cover, though most don’t. We don’t ascribe a religion to any of the characters.”
In addition, the superheroes in The 99 hail from 99 different countries, in keeping with Al-Mutawa’s vision that this super team should “promote multiculturalism and tolerance.”
While Al-Mutawa and his creative team pointedly steer away from the religious and political issues of the Middle East in The 99, the comic’s origins are deeply rooted in such matters.
While he was training to become a clinical psychologist, Kuwait-born Al-Mutawa, who was educated at Columbia and Long Island universities, worked with the survivors of political torture at New York’s Bellevue Hospital. Among those he cared for were former soldiers in the Iraq army, who had invaded Al-Mutawa’s country in 1990, leading to the Gulf War. They had grown up idolizing the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, only to be tortured by him later.
As the father of five young boys, Al-Mutawa says he became “increasingly alarmed about role models that are based on my culture.”
At every other turn, Al-Mutawa found such false idols: “Those who have taken the (Islamic) religion and politicized it, doing terrible things in the name of it,” he says.
Eventually Al-Mutawa came to the conclusion: “When you’re a therapist, you reach one person an hour. As a writer, you can reach a million a minute.”
That’s when he began conceiving the idea for The 99, his mission statement “to link positive messages to the same (religious and cultural) underpinnings that the bad guys have linked their violent messages.”
In creating The 99, he was distinctly inspired by the way Western superheroes were often based on biblical archetypes.
“But nobody had used the Qur’an for that stuff . . . and that was my pitch to my investors,” Al-Mutawa says.
The heroes of the 99 derive their powers from ancient, mystical stones. Though religion is not broached in the stories, the powers of The 99 are based on the 99 attributes of Allah, such as strength, wisdom and foresight.
To be sure, The 99 has taken off, its growth showing no signs of abating.
The comic, published by Al-Mutawa’s Teshkeel Media Group, is licensed in eight languages, English, Arabic, Turkish and Indonesian among them. While the comic is not yet widely available in Canada, a crossover with DC Comics — which teams The 99 up the Justice League of America and such iconic characters as Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman — is.
Meanwhile, Forbes magazine called The 99 “one of the top trends sweeping the globe” and Al-Mutawa was named a young global leader at the World Economic Forum.
The 99 has been met with some resistance, however.
Even DC Comics took its share of negative feedback when The 99 teamed up with the Justice League.
“People accused DC of being traitors and we heard things like . . .‘Will (The 99) blow up children and stone women?’ . . . . People thought we were trying to brainwash kids to Islam.”
He says he understood the responses and they only strengthened his faith in The 99.
“We’re more determined than ever to make the message loud and clear,” Al-Mutawa says. “What we’re doing has nothing to do with religion. It’s about reclaiming the meaning and understanding of Islam from those who have taken it hostage.”
Islam Inspires Superheroes, a lecture by Dr. Naif Al-Mutawa, is Wednesday at 6:30 at U of C’s Craigie Hall. Tickets are $12 ($15 at the door) through www.thewesternmuslim.com
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