Earlier this year, Egyptian comics creator Deena Mohamed, perhaps best known internationally for her work originating the superheroine Qahera, spoke with Egyptian Streetsabout her latest creation, the graphic novel trilogy Shubeik Lubeik which won Best Graphic Novel and the Grand Prize at Cairo Comix Festival in 2017.
In addition to minding a balance between authentic, native Egyptian themes and interest by Western audiences, Mohamed also looks to dispel myths not only about women but also about “diverse” work:
“It’s kind of a myth that people won’t support ‘diverse’ work. What actually happens is the opposite – people want you to write about ‘the issues’ (for Westerners, Islam and feminism, for Egyptians, feminism) but they want you to write about it in a very specific way,” she told Egyptian Streets.
“They want really superficial, easily-quoted takes,” she elaborates. “They love women empowerment, if women empowerment means sharing [online] a hijabi superhero comic without ever reading the messages behind it. […] At some point you start to feel very patronised.”
In advance of the Spring 2017 release of Muslim Superheroes: Comics, Islam, and Representation, Mizan has been featuring a series of related articles on its Mizan Pop site. The first, dated this past summer, provides an overview of that category’s — “Muslim superheroes” — history.
The study of Muslim superheroes has only quite recently begun in earnest, with scholars like comics historian Fredrik Strömberg and French scholar Shirin Edwin publishing some of the first scholarly articles in this specific field in 2011. There has been a small but steady stream of work on the subject since. Regrettably, while some of this scholarship is of high quality, it has, to date, been scattered over multiple disciplines, and new work has only rarely been in dialogue with what has come before.
In theory, Muslim Superheroes, edited by A. David Lewis and Martin Lund, is intended to further that dialogue and provide stronger connective tissue between the disciplines on the topic. Their promotional Facebook page features links to some of that “steady stream on the subject” and a preview of the book jacket (featuring art by Qaheraartist Deena Mohamed).
(The following article by Ardo Omer first appeared at Panels.net on 7/17/2015. It is presented here with her permission.)
Eid Mubarak, readers! For most Muslims, today marks the end of Ramadan – an Islamic month – which is roughly 30 days of fasting, and Muslims are expected to not consume food or drink from sunrise to sunset. Eid al-Fitr is a celebration of the end of Ramadan, and marks the start of a new Islamic month: Shawwal. I thought it would be great to celebrate alongside some fellow Muslims in comics to mark the occassion on Panels. I hope you all join in on the festivities, and if you happen to see a Muslim today, greet them with Eid Mubarak. Now onwards!
Qahera: The Superhero
Qahera is a webcomic about a Muslim female superhero who fights misogyny, and Islamophobia. She’s created by a Muslim Egyptian woman, and it’s a great read.
Shahara Hasan is a character in a limited Vertigo series called Bodies by Si Spenser, Meghan Hetrick, Dean Ormston, Tula Lotay, and Phil Winslade. She’s a Detective Sergeant who’s one of four detectives across four time periods trying to solve a murder. She tries to balance her faith, her duty, being a Muslim, and identifying as British which sounds like an interesting read. It’s a comic I definitely want to check out.
The following announcement has been released and authorized for republishing and redistribution. Please feel free to copy the content below, link to this posting, or share this PDF of the Call for Papers:
From The Webster Journal – http://websterjournal.com/2013/11/20/global-thinking-kamala-khan-marvel-launches-female-muslim-superhero/
Call for Papers Muslim Superheroes: Comics, Islam, and Representation
Editors: A. David Lewis and Martin Lund
Now accepting chapter proposals for new collection with established publisher interest!
Despite turning a rather blind eye to them through much of the twentieth century, major American comic book publishers like Marvel Comics and DC Comics have featured, in the twenty-first century, numerous Muslim superhero characters, with the seeming intention to diversify their fictional universes and to provide corrective representations of Muslims in a cultural moment when stereotype and vilification of Muslims and Islam is particularly rife. The most recent example is Marvel’s Kamala Khan (Ms. Marvel, Feb. 2014). Although it might be easy to dismiss Ms. Marvel as something peripheral, she was discussed in various mainstream media long before her first appearance. High praise was expressed by Muslims and non-Muslims who thought the character could help “normalize” Muslims in American eyes while vehement opposition was voiced by critics who regarded her as “appeasement” of Muslims. As recently as January 2015, the character was plastered on anti-Muslim ads in San Francisco, illustrating the cultural power such characters can attain. It seems clear that, today, Muslim superheroes and Islam in comic books, more generally matter greatly to a large number of Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
Of course, Muslim superheroes are not restricted to the post-9/11 years, to the major superhero publishers, nor to the United States. There have been limited examples of Muslim superheroes in American superhero comics since their so-called “Golden Age.” And, smaller American publishers have created characters like Buraaq and the Silver Scorpion. More importantly, in recent years a steady stream of successful Muslim superhero comics has been emerging from Islamic contexts, ranging from the now multinational The 99 to the activist webcomic Qahera, much of which has also met with both approval and condemnation at home and abroad.
However, neither the historical precedents for the most recent American characters nor the contemporary diversity among Muslim superheroes is widely known. Although the Muslim superhero is becoming an increasingly important cultural phenomenon, it is still understudied and ill-understood, as is the representation of Islam in comics generally. Therefore, we are now looking for chapter proposals for the edited volume Muslim Superheroes. Through a series of close readings, this collection will study how Muslim and non-Muslim comics creators and critics have produced, reproduced, and represented different conceptions of Islam and Muslimness, embodied in superhero comics characters specifically and comic book protagonists more generally. The purpose of the collection is threefold. First, it will assemble studies of a variety of comics characters and, thus, begin to outline the long history and diversity of Muslim superheroes. Second, it will attempt to answer some basic questions about these characters: why do Muslim superheroes keep being created?; what purposes do they serve?; how do they succeed (and how do they fail) in performing their assigned duties as signifiers of one conception of Islam or another? Third, it sets out to consider the extent of the impact Muslim superheroes have and will continue to have on both the genre and its audiences today. Possible topics for proposals include, but are not limited to:
Muslim superheroes in Marvel or DC comics in a specific period (“Golden Age,” “Silver Age,” “Bronze Age,” post-9/11)
Close readings of specific characters from other publishers (e. g. Buraaq, Silver Scorpion, Qahera, The 99)
Reception (positive and negative), consumption, and uses of Muslim superheroes
Translation and transposition of American superheroes in Islamic contexts
Please send a short synopsis (no more than 150 words) of your chapter, a full abstract (no more than 800 words), as well as contact information, affiliation, and a short CV with publication list to a.lewis@mcphs.edu by April 30, 2015. Feel free to direct any questions to Martin Lund at p.martin.lund@gmail.com.
*** About the Editors A. David Lewis is the co-editor of Graven Images: Religion in Comic Books and Graphic Novels (Bloomsbury) and Digital Death: Mortality and Beyond in the Online Age (Praeger). He holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Boston University and is both an Executive Board Member of the Comics Studies Society and a founding member of Sacred & Sequential.
Martin Lund is a Swedish Research Council International Postdoc at Linnaeus University and Visiting Research Scholar at the Gotham Center for New York City History at the CUNY Graduate Center. He holds a Ph.D. in Jewish Studies from Lund University and is an editor of the Scandinavian Journal of Comic Art and a contributing member of Sacred & Sequential.
She’s feisty, she’s formidable, she’s Muslim, and she’s not Ms. Marvel. Meet Qahera, the creation of art student Deena Mohamed, ready to take out the “misogynistic trash.” Read here.
@ the intersection of religion and comics: Graphic Religion
Earlier this year, Egyptian comics creator Deena Mohamed, perhaps best known internationally for her work originating the superheroine Qahera, spoke with Egyptian Streets about her latest creation, the graphic novel trilogy Shubeik Lubeik which won Best Graphic Novel and the Grand Prize at Cairo Comix Festival in 2017.
