Chuck is over. One of the TV shows that I watched regularly, that I looked forward to with each episode, finished its 5 year run last night. I get invested in the TV shows that I watch and felt the need to write about Chuck, much like I did when Battlestar Galactica ended. I would have written about Lost if it didn’t totally bum me out*…

So… Chuck…

Like BSG, I didn’t watch Chuck when it first came on. I happened to watch the first episodes of the first season online (legally, thankyouverymuch) and quickly ran through them. Season 2 was next and I watched that through a mix of iTunes and Hulu. When Season 3 started up, I was ready.

Simply put, I loved Chuck. The show was a mix of comedy and spy stuff and had a great cast that made it all work. While everyone was good, the show wouldn’t have been even remotely believable if not for Zachary Levi who plays Chuck, the nerdy guy who quickly got in way over his head as he became a government asset while still working in the Nerd Herd at the Buy More (much like the Geek Squad at the Best Buy).

Granted, not every episode was perfect. Season 3 got off to a rocky start but then definitely got better. And of course, like any series, there was an episode here or there that didn’t quite mesh the way it should have. In the end, unlike with Smallville when I couldn’t wait to have that show finish so I wouldn’t feel obligated to watch it anymore, I’m going to miss Chuck. I think the finale ended really well last night and although I’m still feeling slightly sad by a few things that had happened, ultimately I’m optimistic about what the ending of the show meant (why yes, those are vague statements but I don’t want to spoil the finale at all).

Here are a couple of moments that really exemplify the kind of show Chuck was (kinda sorta spoilers). You have to go to Youtube to watch the actual videos since the embed feature was disabled:

Season 2 – In order to get the codes for a missile, Chuck had to get all the way to the end of an arcade game, which was proving to be difficult until he realized that the pattern to the game was in line of Rush’s Tom Sawyer. Meanwhile Sarah, his handler/partner had to find the baddies:

Chuck Vs Tom Sawyer

Season 2 finale – Chuck has his friend stall his sister’s wedding while he tried to deal with the evil spy group Fulcrum. His friend stalled the wedding by letting two guys from the Buy More (Jeffster!) play Mr. Roboto in front of all the guests, all which havoc is being wreaked in the next room:

Chuck and Mr. Roboto

Goodbye Chuck, you will be missed!

Further reading – check out my post on Zachary Levi’s movie Shades of Ray, where he plays a half-white, half-Pakistani guy.

*SPOILERS ON LOST: The thing with Lost that seriously made me feel sad for a few days was the fact that Jack and the crew went back to the the island for nothing. Yes, Jack thought they had to go back but we all found out later that it was all just a trick so that one guy could return to the island in the form of Locke. More people died than they had to. Sawyer and Juliette could’ve played out the happy life they had for themselves in the past but that was all ruined by the appearance of the Oceanic 6, who all could have moved on had they just stayed in the present. To find out that it was all for nothing… that just got me.

I went to a lecture last week on what Muslims think of evolution and the lecturer, a Muslim well versed on the subject, went on to say that what Muslims believe on that topic is dependent on the country and culture in which they grew up in. I thought it was a total cop-out. Aren’t there some aspects of evolution all Muslims agree on? Our culture can’t dictate everything about religion, y’know?

But sometimes all we do see is culture, masquerading as religion. That’s the stuff that trips us up now and then and that’s what we see in the book American Dervish, written by Ayad Akhtar.

The book is about Hayat, the son of Pakistani-American immigrants who was raised in Milwaukee. Hayat is narrating the story as an adult to a classmate about the time when he was 11 years old and his mother’s best friend from Pakistan, Mina, comes to live with them. Soon, Mina is courted by Hayat’s father’s friend, who happens to be Jewish. I don’t want to give away too much more but the reader knows that something terrible is going to happen since Hayat hinted as much before he tells the story in the first place.

The book is good but some of the characters the author creates who are practicing Muslims (or depicting themselves as practicing) are all mostly hypocrites and also called out as sheep who can’t think for themselves. I almost wanted to take offense to this and say that the author shouldn’t make Muslims look that bad but I realized that Ayad Akhtar didn’t set out to tell a PC story about Islam and Muslims. This isn’t about how all Muslims are bad though and so we shouldn’t take it as such.

So instead of being offended I’ll instead take the above, and other parts of the book, as a lesson about how we shouldn’t be ignorant about religion.

Islam is meant to be a very open, non-judge-y religion and yet we all sometimes act like everything is black and white with no room for interpretation. The problem is that a lot of us, and I include myself in this, just aren’t educated enough to know what’s what.* I used to think things were either right or wrong growing up. You were supposed to do this, you aren’t supposed to do that. Done and done. But things are never that simple.

A lot of the male Muslim characters in American Dervish are hardly role models but there is one person in the book that tries to embody Islam in her own way, Mina. She’s the one that first got Hayat interested in Islam and her telling Hayat that a lot of it is about intention is an idea that many of us should be able to grasp since that is what many of us were taught.

None of us are perfect. However, we can take a lesson from Mina and think about our intentions with our actions. Let’s not use religion as a way to make ourselves feel superior over others and understand that culture is all well and good, but try not to have it mess with faith.

So those are my thoughts on American Dervish. Not quite a review but more a reflection. If you’re upset that Akhtar didn’t tell your story as an American-Muslim-Pakistani, well then, write your own! We need more of these types of stories out there anyways :)

Take care folks!

*Huge sidenote:

I recently read the book I Speak for Myself: American Women on Being Muslim, a collection of essays written by American Muslim women. There was one essay that really resonated with me because it dealt with the importance of educating oneself on religion. In one part of the essay, the writer was concerned a friend who had studied Islam abroad would judge her, much as the writer had previously judged her own husband and his religiousness. That worry turned out to be unnecessary. Here’s an excerpt:

Much to my surprise, she did not judge me at all. I worried my boisterous personality would offend her or my clothes would be too form-fitting for her sensibilities- or that she would interpret the speed of my prayers as insincerity in my devotion. When I later confessed these concerns to her, she smiled and said, “My teacher taught me that knowledge is mercy. The more you know, the less you will judge others.” I can think of no better representation of the spirit of truth and of Islam with that statement. The more we study and learn about Islam, the more we will realize how little we know about the truth – and the less we will insist on imposing rigid delineations of Islam on others and ourselves.

-From the essay Truth Is Not Always Self-Evident by Rabea Chaudhry from the book I Speak for Myself. Check out the book if you can. All the essays are worth reading.

Disclaimer: I actually know Rabea but that’s not why I happened to write about this essay – it happened to fit in with what I was talking about :)

I realize today is the 2nd day of 2012 and that maybe I missed the window of time when one is allowed to reflect on 2011 but I’ll just ask for forgiveness and move on…

Looking back on the year in which I turned 30, hands down the greatest, most awesomest thing that happened was that I got to go for Hajj. For a Muslim who is financially and physically able, going for the Hajj is a requirement and must be completed at least once in one’s life. It was truly a blessing that I got to go on the pilgrimage at this age.

After I got back, someone asked me if I was going to write about my experiences. At first, I wanted to but realized I wrote all that I needed to say in my Facebook update on my way back from Saudi Arabia:

“Hajj went well, Alhamdulilah. Hoping to now institute some change in my life for the better, InshAllah. ”

I know, I know, not exactly the most insightful statement but I felt like that was all I had to say in written form.

However, when anyone asked me in person how my trip was, I would tell them about it. I talked about the mosque in Medina and how I couldn’t get over how beautiful it was, about saying my prayers in front of the Kaaba, staying in tents in Mina, and how really cool a lot of the people I met turned out to be.

Funny enough though, I do feel the need to write about one aspect right now…

Like I said above, I came back with the sense of wanting to change. Because, I have to be honest with y’all, I felt like my flaws were exposed during the trip. There were a few times where I took a step back from the situation and couldn’t believe myself. I wanted to be as perfect as possible but who knows how many mistakes I made and how many defects in my own self manifested. At some point though, I realized that I was just going to have to try to do my best and quit worrying. Beyond that, I could pray that my pilgrimage was accepted and start incorporating changes in my life – I want to be a better person, be more charitable, be more spiritual and religious, more patient, more everything. Essentially, I wanted to improve myself.

Having said all of the above, more than 6 weeks have passed and I feel like I haven’t gotten on any of the things I set for myself. I keep on thinking about all that I want to do but never actually do them (Hey, I guess that’s another one of my flaws!).

So with the new year, I want to take the opportunity to start fresh. Just because I haven’t done something yet doesn’t mean I can never do it. I still have a lot to reflect on from my pilgrimage and I don’t want to lose the momentum that came from it. Therefore I will:

- Start all the things I said to myself I would do when I got back Hajj
and
- Quit procrastinating on a few other things that I’ve wanted to start/continue for a while now (Man, remember when I was learning Arabic? Exactly!)

Here’s hoping for a successful 2012 for all of us, InshAllah.

Thanks for reading and Happy New Year!

Lady in front of me praying in Medina

So in my last post I posed a really off the wall question: “To take one’s life is completely against Islam but what if it has to happen to prevent something horrible from occurring to others?”*

Funny enough, I sort of got a response to my question. Well, as close as I could get anyways.

I found myself at Taleef, a local Islamic institution that’s not quite a mosque, last week for their weekly Sunday night class on Living Islam. I hadn’t been in a while and wanted to come to the last class of the year.

During the talk about patience, humility, and other topics, the teacher mentioned a couple of stories where people seemed to take a step that one would think would put them in harm’s way unnecessarily:

1st story – In the time of Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), and I’m totally paraphrasing this story, there was a caravan of sorts that had to stop traveling because a lion came across their path and didn’t seem to want to move. One of the guys went to face the lion to try to get it out of the way. When asked why he risked getting hurt, he said something along the lines that he knew that a lion could harm him or eat him and that’s what the nature of a lion is but that the lion would only truly harm him if that was supposed to happen and God had willed it.

2nd story – The teacher was talking about this guy he knows that was in a prison riot. As tear gas was all over the place and bullets were flying around, he was standing up and protecting some of his fellow inmates. He knew that bullets tear flesh but he felt that they would only hit him if they were supposed to (i.e. if God willed it).

The entire time he was talking about these stories, I was thinking about how they related to my last post. The teacher asked anyone if they had any questions and I knew this would be the closest I would get to to ever ask the question that I’ve had on my mind. Considering the context had already been set, there was really no better time to ask.

So I asked my question.

When is it ok to put yourself in harm’s way? What if you know that your actions could get you hurt or killed?

He asked for an example and I brought up police officers, firefighters, and the solider who throws himself on a bomb to protect his peers. Basically, anyone who has to risk their life for something beyond themselves. (If you think that I actually brought up being infected by a hypothetical zombie virus, you’re insane.)

The teacher talked about ‘altruistic sacrifice’ and mentioned that people put their life on the line for a valid reason all the time. He talked about women giving birth as one example. He talked about martyrs in general. He also mentioned that becoming a police officer or firefighter doesn’t have to mean that one will die from their job.

On some level though, you do have to think about if you are invoking fate and faith or just being foolish. It’s not foolish to want to be a mom, a firefighter, cop, solider, despite the risks involved. However, as the teacher brought up, you can’t do something like run around on 880 (highway in CA) and think that cars will only hit you if they are meant to hit you. That’s just being stupid. Common sense has to play a part.

So for everyone out there, it’s completely okay to be the hero when you need to be one, when you have to be one. Sure, make the distinction between faith vs foolishness but keep it all in mind – the lion won’t harm you and the bullets won’t hurt you if they aren’t meant to. And if they do, well, there’s a wisdom in that as well.

*I was asked by someone if I wrote my last post while I was high. I assure you, I was not:) I can handle my coffee folks and to anyone who doubts that, I propose… a coffee-off.

The show The Walking Dead had its midseason finale last week. The premise is simple: people somehow turned into zombies and are roaming the earth while groups of humans here and there do their best to survive.

The DVR had recorded* all the new episodes but I only recently caught up with all of them, finishing the last episode a few days after it aired. This post isn’t about how I feel about the series though** but more about a question posed to me from someone when we were discussing the show:

Would you rather be bitten or torn apart by a zombie?

For those of you not familiar with the rules of zombie dynamics, once bitten by a zombie, you will turn into a zombie yourself. Most people believe that once that happens, one is technically dead, that one’s actual essence is lost forever and that one just becomes a soulless creature with a hunger for brains*** and other juicy parts of a human.

If you get torn apart, you are torn apart and that’s that. Adios, Au Revoir, Ma’a salama!

I thought about it for a few seconds while weighing my options until I picked… being torn apart.

Yes, getting torn apart would be painful until the very end but to be bitten and knowing what’s going to become of oneself is even worse. I would hate to be bitten, turn into a zombie myself, and then be responsible for someone else either turning into a zombie too or dying. (I was going to say that I wouldn’t be able to live with myself but, well, yeah.).

I had a really random thought though. To take one’s life is completely against Islam but what if it has to happen to prevent something horrible from occurring to others? For example, what if one had been bitten and knowing what will happen, chooses to off themselves? From a religious standpoint, I have no idea if that’s okay or not.

You guys, I’m not crazy. I understand that the likelihood of a zombie takeover is minimal but this question of whether it’s ok or not can totally be applied to a lot of other scenarios, which those who have seen many action movies know. Besides, are the chances of a zombie outbreak even slim? The CDC totally has a page on what to do when zombies attack.

In the end… this is just a weirdly random blog post. Please consider the above the ramblings of someone with too much on their mind combined with the need to update this blog :)

Actually, funny enough, this is my second post about zombies. Check out my first one, which was about learning to drive a stick shift to prepare for the zombie apocalypse.

* I almost said ‘taped’ but no one actually tapes stuff anymore, y’know?
**I will no longer watch it. How could a show on zombies be so boring? No character development, annoying characters in general, etc. Not worth my time.
*** I just had an idea for a zombie book – The Hunger Brains!

In elementary school around Thanksgiving time, we would dress up as Pilgrims and Native Americans and sit down and have a meal. Because that’s what Thanksgiving was about right- that time when the Pilgrims invited the Native Americans to eat with them!* This was all kind of weird to me, especially since it culminated with us eating cornbread, a substance I didn’t understand (corn+bread=???).

We never actually did Thanksgiving at our place growing up because it just wasn’t something we did, y’know? It seemed like a tradition that most Pakistanis/Muslims I knew didn’t take part in back then. The only time we even tried anything was once during high school when my mom cooked a turkey during Thanksgiving. My mom is an excellent cook, Masha’Allah, but American style turkey wasn’t really her thing and we banned her from making turkey at home in the future.

Years after that, my older sister decided/was determined to make a traditional Thanksgiving Dinner for the family. It was “The Year My Sister Discovered Williams-Sonoma” so armed with all the paraphernalia needed to make everything the way it was supposed to be, my sister pulled it off, despite the hilarious declaration from my brother that he preferred mashed potatoes from a box.

Now we do have a turkey dinner on Thanksgiving the years my sister wants to do a dinner and that works for me.

A few Muslims have issues celebrating Thanksgiving but I have to be honest (and I say this without being a scholar of any kind), I don’t see the issue since I don’t think of it as a religious holiday and from what I understand from my Facebook news feed and from Twitter, a lot of Muslims in the U.S. don’t have a problem with it either and partake in some sort of Thanksgiving tradition.

Some arguments against the holiday say that we shouldn’t have just one day to give thanks, we should be thankful everyday. Well, a lot of us do try to be thankful everyday. We’re just trying to take advantage of the fact that everyone has a day off and there’s an abundance of halal turkey being sold at this time of year.

I have always been thankful for all that I have and that feeling has been amplified after coming back from Hajj in Saudi Arabia. I’m more grateful and thankful than ever for the incredibly blessed life I have. I take a lot for granted, like being able to take a hot shower whenever I want for example, and so I want to be more cognizant of how lucky I am to have these luxuries.

So this is me saying thanks – I’m really thankful for everything and everyone that I have in my life, will continue to be thankful for any blessings I receive in the future, and will InshAllah never become arrogant and become ungrateful. Hopefully, we can all remember to give thanks everyday without having a turkey meal around to remind us :)

One of my sister’s turkeys from a few years ago

*I get upset sometimes when I look back at that combined with the fact that we also learned how awesome it was when Columbus discovered America. I really hope kids these days aren’t taught like that anymore.

I caught the first episode of the new reality series All-American Muslim on TLC last night. Announced several months ago, the series follows around a few Muslim families in the city of Dearborn, Michigan, which is home to the highest concentration of Arabs in the U.S.

I voiced my hesitation for this series when it was first announced but still watched it last night because this could be *The Thing* that really helps the average American citizen to get to know Muslims.

Having said that, I honestly don’t think I cared for the show.

I’ll admit, maybe I’m not really meant to be in the target audience for this. I have a strict “No reality show” TV diet so why did I honestly think that I would get into a reality show just because it was about Muslims? Also, it aired after another reality show called Sister Wives. SISTER WIVES. (I know!!)

My first issue with this show was the lack of cohesion. The first episode revolved mostly around one of the cast members, an Arab Muslim lady, getting married to an Irish Catholic guy, who ended up converting to Islam because of her. However, the episode jumped around to the different families covered in this show in a manner that didn’t make any sense.

Secondly, a lot of American Muslims don’t live in a town like Dearborn that is filled with mostly Muslims. Yeah, I live in the Bay and there are a lot of Muslims here but by a lot, I mean 1% or something like that (I made that number up, I have no idea how many Muslims are in the Bay Area). Also, unlike the population of Dearborn, we’re not all mostly Arab either. The Muslim population consists of Arabs, South Asians, African Americans, Caucasians (look at me, all politically correct!), and a host of other races. Some of us were born Muslim, some converted, some have lost touch with their faith while others have reconnected with it later in life.

My point is this – you can’t go to a principally Arab community and say that the life one has there represents the life of an All American Muslim.

And all of the above doesn’t even go into how easily this show could turn into a competition between Practicing vs. Not Practicing Muslims and who’s cooler.

Here’s the thing though – the above whining is all moot. Like I said, this show isn’t for me. I don’t care for reality shows and I don’t need to come to terms with Muslims and how they have infiltrated the U.S. with their Sharia Law and for goodness sakes, can’t they all just go back to their country?? If this show helps just one person understand that Muslims are human beings too with regular life issues, then that’s more than most of us will ever do. And I’ll be honest, I don’t think there could be any show about Muslims that would make all Muslims happy and represented because we’re all so different.

I really don’t think it was that entertaining though and considering how much TV I already watch (Chuck is back on! I’m finally all caught up with Parks and Recreation!!) I’m afraid All-American Muslim hasn’t made the cut to join my other DVR subscriptions.

Sidenote: One of the families featured is the family of the coach of the Fordson football team in Dearborn. The coach was already featured heavily in the documentary Fordson: Faith, Fasting, Football. Do yourself a favor and watch that documentary instead of this show.

For those of you that don’t know, the Hajj is a pilgrimage in and around Mecca, Saudi Arabia and is a requirement for Muslims if one is financially and physically able to make the pilgrimage. The actual rituals of Hajj span a period of about 5 days that come around once a year in the Islamic calendar.

That period of time is coming up soon and I have the incredible honor to go and perform the Hajj this year.

Despite the fact that I have this website and am on Twitter and Facebook, I’m still a private person. I was debating whether or not to even say anything about going for Hajj on here just in case it may be misconstrued as me being arrogant (“Hi Everyone! I’m more pious than you!! Just an FYI.”*) but I wanted to share.

Hajj is one of those things that I thought would happen… eventually. In the past few years though, going for Hajj actually started to materialize as something that I could feasibly do sooner rather than later. Last year, we were thinking about going but it didn’t work out. Even this year, things were touch and go for a while but Alhamdulilah, it all came together.

I’m not going to lie, I was definitely overwhelmed with the prospect of going for a while mostly for the reason that I was afraid that I would do something wrong and commit some faux pas. But if not now, then when? Who knows how things will be like in the future. All any of us ever know is the here and now. Alhamdulilah, the elation of going is getting stronger as the day of departure approaches and my worry is diminishing with each second of preparation I’m doing for the trip and how to perform the Hajj. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll probably still be freaking out to some degree from now until I go, but it’ll be a more controlled form of freak out rather than a free for all.

Besides reading about the rituals for Hajj, I’ve been trying to get myself in the right frame of mind to make this trip. One of the things that people seem to stress above all else is the need for patience. All 3 million+ Muslims that will be converging on Mecca will all be there for the same purpose and delays or issues of some sort of another are bound to happen. The best anyone can do is just go with it.

Having said all that, I humbly request that you all keep me in your duas/prayers (if that’s your thing) as I go for Hajj that it’s made easy and that it’s accepted!

Also, I wanted to ask that if there are any of you who would like me to say any duas on your behalf during Hajj, please feel free to leave a comment or send me an email with the specifics :)

*Please note, I would never actually say that ever. I would never in my life presume to think I’m more pious than anyone.

I’m much too pious to do that *cough*.

That last sentence was a joke so laugh, laugh I say!

Back in 2007, I did my sister a favor and went with her to the Lupe Fiasco concert in San Francisco at the Fillmore. She was a fan while I knew close to nothing about him. All I knew about the guy was that he had a couple of albums out, he’s a skater, and he’s Muslim. I wasn’t into hip hop at all and I was there without having listened to any of his music while wondering if what I was wearing was cool enough for a hip hop concert in the city (In retrospect, no. To be fair though, my outfit is rarely cool enough for any occasion).

Contrary to expectations, I really enjoyed myself at the time at the concert. There was a full band to back him up, the acoustics at the Fillmore were awesome, and it didn’t hurt that my sister and I were pretty close to the front. While Lupe* was singing “Kick, Push”, his first single off of his album Food and Liquor, I remember turning to my sister and saying “I didn’t think a song about skating could be this good!”

She gave me what could only be categorized as A Look.

I left the show an official fan of Lupe Fiasco. I thought “Hey, maybe I do like hip hop!”

No I don’t.

Turns out that I’m not too good going outside of my music comfort zone of only a few specific types of rock. I’m just not into hip hop. I know there’s a lot of good stuff out there but for the life of me, I can’t get into it. I even tried going to a hip hop concert for another famous artist and I was surprised by my apathy. I’m not cool and I’m ok with this.

But, I’ll still listen to Lupe Fiasco.

I went to his show last night at The Fox Theater in Oakland and it was seriously an awesome concert. I’m not really good at writing about concerts (I probably wouldn’t know what else to say except “the music was a-ok!”) so I’ll just direct you to this article over here. If you missed it, you missed out on something really cool.**

Besides just being an exceptional artist though, Lupe Fiasco has been really putting himself out there in terms of his politics, which is why I and a lot of other people respect him. I’m sure artists sometimes lose fans if the fans get turned off by their politics so what he says and does means that much more.

For example, he’s outspoken in what he believes in on Twitter and he even spoke to the Occupy Oakland crowd last night before the concert and had donated some items to the cause (this isn’t the first time he’s donated to a cause). Also, the Palestinian flag was being waved around on stage during the last portion of the concert. That’s a pretty huge statement to make, folks.

So in the end, I’m fine with not being into hip hop unless it’s Lupe Fiasco. I like what he says in most of his songs (in the last album, “Words I Never Said” and “All Black Everything” are probably two of my favorites) and the fact that he comes across as a pretty cool human being doesn’t hurt either.

And now for some… Bushra Concert Rules! The rules that I, Bushra, need to abide by so I can enjoy a concert. Please note this has nothing to do with the above so you can technically stop reading and not lose what this post is about.

1) I need a reserved seat. I can’t compete with the young’uns and hard core fans in general admission. I don’t care enough to have to deal with stuff like people trying to take my spot.

2) Whoever I’m with needs to understand that I’m a passive concert goer. I don’t feel the need to “WOOOOOO!!!!” or sway or do anything else except sit/stand basically motionless. The fact that I look and act like a stone doesn’t mean that I’m not enjoying myself.

3) I have to at some point in the night make fun of something, whether it be an artist, a song, or some particular lyrics. I mean no disrespect to anyone or any song. Like last night, during the song “Never Forget You” after the lyrics of “And I’ll never forget you…!” I couldn’t help but nudge my buddy, the Kimchi Ninja, and proclaim “I’ll never forget you Soerha!”

All of the above was probably why it was best my sister was in general admission with her friends and I had myself a nice, reserved spot up in the balcony.

*He and I are on a first name basis, didn’t you know??

**As much as I enjoyed the concert, I have to admit that I really didn’t care for the attire, or lack thereof, of the backup singers.

Dr. Naif Al-Mutawa, creator of the comic book series The 99, which is also currently being produced as an animated series, is the subject of the upcoming documentary Wham! Bam! Islam!, to air on PBS on October 13th. From the website:

Al-Mutawa came up with the concept of The 99: a team of superheroes, each one exemplifying one of the 99 attributes of Allah. His motivations were both entrepreneurial and idealistic — The 99 would exemplify the Islamic virtues of compassion, understanding, and tolerance – qualities not often associated with Islam by the West. Within the Islamic world, Al-Mutawa hoped these new role models would counter the growing tide of political and religious extremism.

I got to speak with Dr. Al-Mutawa before a screening of Wham! Bam! Islam! in San Francisco. After I first geeked out about comic books and specifically The 99, which I only just started reading and have gotten into, I got down to business:

If you had to choose between the power of flight and the power of invisibility, what would you choose and why?

I think I choose invisibility because as it is, I can’t fly, but my thoughts race and I speak very fast so I might as well be flying and it’s not fun. [Laughs] And actually when I lecture, I lecture at the medical school in Kuwait, in the beginning I always tell my students that I speak so fast sometimes my own mother doesn’t understand me.

Being invisible takes the pressure off. We get recognized all over the world and Kuwait has largely kept quiet about us, which is a double edged sword because on one hand you want your country to appreciate what you’re doing culturally. On the other hand, not as many people recognize you, which is not a bad thing when you are with your family in the mall.

You do seem to be in the media a lot over there [Middle East] – is your face plastered around, are you a bit of celebrity?

No, no. I try as much as I can for stuff to be about the characters and not me. For example, we were on the cover of Newsweek and that was just the characters and recently Forbes put us on the cover in the Middle East but they wanted me there so I went there with the comic books. I try to get away with just doing the characters on the cover of Forbes but they pushed to get me on there so I did it. I try as much as I can to make the characters front and center.

Is there any particular character you identify with in the 99? Ramzi or…?

Ramzi. When I first created him, he was a Kuwaiti psychologist. He’s not Kuwaiti and he’s not a psychologist anymore but they say write what you know and that’s what I knew – I’m a psychologist by background. I wish I could be more like him. He’s calm, well put together, not reactionary. He believes there is good in based on The 99, out there in the world and he’s out there tirelessly trying to find it and that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing with the project – he raises money to to help support the foundation, I raise money to help the project. So there are parallels for sure so I say he’s the one I identify with the most.

Last year, you had a crossover with the Justice League. Have you had more recognition in the United States because of that?

We have, and it’s a double edged sword. Last year President Obama in a speech he gave, talked about the crossover and he called it the most innovative response to his Cairo speech: he reached out to the Muslim world and in return, my characters reached right back to the Justice League to implement his vision.

The comic books start out with distrust. In fact, Superman punches Jabbar initially and then they figure out that it’s the bad guys from both universes that caused the distrust and the stories move over to trust and ends with them watching President Obama’s speech for a new beginning.

That’s one of the proudest moments of my life no matter how this thing plays out but one of the unfortunate consequences of recognition is that we start getting attacked by people who don’t like Islam very much. So last October it became an issue during the congressional elections: “Obama is a Muslim and this proves it”, “He’s trying to brainwash your kids with sharia-compliant superheroes”, “Anyone watching The 99 will become radicalized and become a jihadi”. My favorite was “We can’t let the Muslims brainwash our children like the Mexicans did with Dora the Explorer”. I mean, just really amazing stuff. All that led to delaying the broadcast of our animated series even though they [network The Hub] bought and paid for the series a year ago.

Meanwhile, we sold it to Cartoon Network in Asia, we sold it in Turkey, Middle East, Australia and other parts of Europe. The first four episodes of the series, it’s actually 26 episodes, are in CGI, HD format, top-tier animation, some of the best the world has seen on television and the U.S., which was supposed to be our first market, now may end up being our last market, if ever, even though they were the first market to buy it.

The irony is when I first started, I got censored in Saudi – when you grow up they tell you the extremism is there, it’s not here in America. The irony is that it’ll be on Saudi TV before American TV, just to put extremism in perspective.

So is there anything you are trying to go around the controversy here, to allay people’s fears that the series would make people “extreme”?

Well the first four episodes actually played at the New York Film Festival and got amazing reviews. For us, people seeing the content is the equivalent of seeing the President’s birth certificate.

The problem that I have is that the delays that happened are almost like an admission of guilt: “Yes, there must be something, that’s why it’s not being broadcast”. So we found another avenue to do it, we came in as a film and we’re still producing season 2 of the animation. It will get on air, it’s a matter of when.

This is not new. In 1970, Sesame Street introduced an African-American couple and got banned in Mississippi and it took the New York Times to name and shame them for them to reverse their decision. It appears that Corporate America is put in a position where, when bigots go after certain groups, they appease them unless they are exposed for doing so and then they [Corporate American] have to choose – are we on the side of bigots or are we on the side of tolerance?

Not too long ago, there was the release of a report called “Fear, Inc”. Do you think that report will help The 99 here in the United States?

I think it further underscores the importance of the project. These people have inspired murderers and it’s much bigger than me. I complain that they try to kill my characters. My characters are fictional. Now they’re killing real people. I think it’s an eye opener. Some people are making money off of this. That’s the bottom line.

What do you see next for The 99?

Season 2 of the animated series is being produced. We need to get on air in the U.S. and some parts of Europe where they have been resistant, like the UK and France and from there, feature film license, games, toys. I have been able to successfully raise money for this 3 times now. But you get to a point where you need the product to be on air, to be seen. I’m very proud of the team. We’ve created almost 1,000 jobs in the last 5 years on 4 continents – it’s become a very big thing for something that started as an idea I had in the back of a cab. Our social objectives are being met, our financial ones not yet but we are very optimistic.

Wham! Bam! Islam! airs on October 13th on PBS. Review to come later on this site!