Tag Archives: islam

academic, events, podcast

Comics and Islam, Live at MICE 2017 – 004 Sacred & Sequential Audio

Muslim identity and practices are featured more comics than ever, from mainstream titles like Ms. Marvelto independent graphic memoirs. This panel at the 2017 Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo (MICE) takes stock of this important growing field — including the brand-new book Muslim Superheroes: Comics, Islam, and Representation — and presents the perspectives of both academics and creators. Featuring discussion with Hussein Rashid (Religion Professor, Barnard College; Contributor, Muslim Superheroes), A. David Lewis (Instructor, MCPHS University; Co-Editor, Muslim Superheroes; writer, Kismet, Man of Fate), Sara Alfageeh (Illustrator, Co-Director, BOY/BYE series MIPSTERZ project), and Hillary Chute (English Professor, Northeastern Unitersity).

A. David Lewis, Hillary Chute, Hussein Rashid, Sara Alfageeh
A. David Lewis, Hillary Chute, Hussein Rashid, Sara Alfageeh
interviews, online

What Do Superheroes Tell Us about Ourselves?

In November, radio station KUOW sat done with both G. Willow Wilson and Reza Aslan to explore the question “What do our superheroes tell us about ourselves?” The conversation, of course, addressed morality and religion, what with Wilson being a Muslim writer perhaps best known for the Muslim superheroine Ms. Marvel and Aslan being a Religion Studies expert.

Aslan pointed out that superheroes have changed a lot since their conception nearly a century ago. The stories are darker. The heroes dwell in gray areas more often. The moral dilemmas are more compelling.

“We have to make these characters interesting by making them reflect the morality the world in which we live,” he said.

Wilson and Aslan said that one thing is clear: Change is constant, as is our resistance to change.

Authors Reza Aslan and G. Willow Wilson. KUOW PHOTO/GIL AEGERTER

The over-thirty-minute conversation covered a range of issues and superhero properties, and it can be heard in full at the KUOW website.

academic, events, podcast

Responses to MUSLIM SUPERHEROES, Live at AAR 2017 – 002 Sacred & Sequential Audio

 

On Saturday, November 18, 2017, the American Academy of Religion annual conference hosted the panel “Responses to Muslim Superheroes,” including presentations by Elizabeth Coody, Mohamed Hassan, Constance Kassor, and Aaron Ricker, with Scott Gardner as presider and A. David Lewis as respondent. Here are their presentations in their entirety from that morning session.

AAR 2017 in Boston, Nov. 18-21

AAR 2017 - Responses to Muslim Superheroes

academic, contributors

Martin Lund on the Possibilities of “Pantheonic Bricolage”

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[The following piece was originally published at MartinLund.me and it is reposted here with the author’s permission.]

The Marvel Universe pantheons

Is It a Thing? “Pantheonic Bricolage.”

If you are at all familiar with my work, you know that I have a particular interest in the intersections between comics and religion. I have spent countless hours studying comics in relation to Judaism and Jewishness, on editing a book about Muslim superheroes (the release of which is so close now I can almost taste it!), and I’m currently drafting a book about the recently deceased evangelical comics propagandist Jack T. Chick (about whom I have written here and here).

In addition to this, I’m also working on a guide to comics and world religions with a couple of fellow scholars of the topic. We have hashed out a rough structure and are working separately on our chapters. In addition to writing about the Abrahamic traditions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), I will also be tackling what we have chosen, for now, to call “Archaic Traditions.” (I just might make another “Is it a thing?” post about that label somewhere down the line.)

This means that I am writing about Greco-Roman, Egyptian, and Old Norse religions. And I am loving it to no end. There is so much interesting material to work with here, and I will be sharing thoughts and reviews as things progress.

But for now, I want to bounce a thing off the internet and see what happens.

I want to talk about what I have been calling, for lack of a better term: “pantheonic bricolage.” It sounds complicated, but it really isn’t.

Continue reading Martin Lund on the Possibilities of “Pantheonic Bricolage” →

interviews

Ron Regé on Drawing from (Outside) the Qur’an

Ron Regé Jr.If you missed this year’s Free Comic Book Day, then you likely didn’t hear about Fantagraphics’ Worlds Greatest Cartoonists collection featuring such creators as Ed Piskor, Richard Sala, or Liz Suburbia. Additionally, the FCBD offering — intended, says the publisher, to “Features a Breadth of Styles and Visions and World-Building” — also included a notable piece from Ron Regé entitled “From the Star and the Clot,” a visual retelling of the Quranic visit of the angel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad.
Given the frequently cited tensions between comics and Islam, Sacred and Sequential had the opportunity to interview Regé  about the origin of and his goals for this work. (Note: “From the Star and the Clot” was first presented as a minicomic and is still available for purchase as a stand-alone work.)
S&S: Where did “From the Star and the Clot” come from? What was your source of inspiration for it?

THE ALPHABET VERSUS THE GODDESSRR: I was inspired to draw this sequence after reading about it in a book called The Alphabet vs The Goddess. I think I happened upon it in a bookstore, strangely enough. In it, Leonard Shlain lays out his theory about how the development of written language helped bring about a patriarchal hierarchy of power and control that was absent from previous image based, matriarchal societies. It’s not a perfect work, but it brings up questions and ideas that I’d been curious about for my entire life.

S&S: How long ago was this, approximately? That is, was this a recent discovery or something that’s shaped your thought for some time?

RR: I guess between 2008-2012 I was putting myself through a sort of self-directed course, reading dozens of books related to spirituality, history, philosophy, etc. I found myself attracted to figures & people with some pretty out there philosophies & ideas. Tesla, Mesmer, Wilhelm Reich, Swedenborg, Gurdjieff, etc & so on. This was all in the period that I was working on The Cartoon Utopia.

The idea that laws and rules written in books could be used as instruments of control by men in power, that a literate class could control the rest of society with such tools is a pretty powerful & obvious argument when looking at the misogynist horror that is Western Civilization. Is it wishful thinking of the modern age to think that oral traditions and societies of the past were more holistic, matriarchal, and malleable when dealing with matters of their moment? Perhaps, but it brings up fascinating conflicts between left & right brain, male & female, science & spirituality that continue to cause much confusion in the world today.

Continue reading Ron Regé on Drawing from (Outside) the Qur’an →