Thursday, December 8, 2011

The 99: Out Of Thin Air

The 99 is a comic series created by clinical psychologist Dr. Naif Al-Mutawa in attempts to bridge the gap and de-stigmatize the Western World's perception of Islam and Islamic culture as a whole. The series has had mixed reviews as a result of the subtle religious undertones presented within the series. The 99 is centered around 99 superheroes, each of which have a stone that chose them and gave them super powers. Each of these 99 superheroes are from 99 different countries and are almost evenly split between boys and girls. All of these 99 superheroes work together to save the world, without regard to what country each other is from or what their religious views are. Through this cohesive system, Dr. Al-Mutawa was able to fuse many different cultures into one. The idea was for the superheroes to learn to navigate differences through problems and who is best suited to solve which specific problem based on what super power they have and the subsequent strengths and weaknesses each superhero has.

Dr. Al-Mutawa came from a conservative Islamic family from Kuwait and saw a problem in the way that the only art they had was based on religion and came from the Koran because art is where expression and opinion begin and when art is religion then there is not much room for expression and opinion. He felt it was unfair that some one should decide what his kids could or could not be exposed to (Pokemon was banned in Kuwait) so he created these comics to teach tolerance and acceptance of differences as well as to disassociate terrorism and extreme evils with Islam as a whole.


Newsweek has come a long way from having the twin towers on the cover to dedicating a cover to The 99, a positive representation of Muslims.

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