Kamala Khan/Ms. Marvel. Muslim superhero. Interesting Stuff

Ethan_Hunt · January 9, 2014, 12:05am

A new hero comes to the Marvel Universe next year with her own all-new solo title. Following the epic events of INFINITY, a 16-year-old Muslim girl from New Jersey discovers extraordinary body-morphing powers and follows in the footsteps of her idol, Captain Marvel, to become the new Ms. Marvel.

The Ms. Marvel mantle has passed to Kamala Khan, a high school student from Jersey City who struggles to reconcile being an American teenager with the conservative customs of her Pakistani Muslim family. So in a sense, she has a “dual identity” before she even puts on a super hero costume. Like a lot of children of immigrants, she feels torn between two worlds: the family she loves, but which drives her crazy, and her peers, who don’t really understand what her home life is like.
This makes her tough and vulnerable at the same time. When you try to straddle two worlds, one of the first things you learn is that instead of defending good people from bad people, you have to spend a lot of time defending good people from each other. It’s both illuminating and emotionally brutal. That’s what makes this book different.

Wikipedia

Marvel’s announcement was met with widespread reactions online. Fatemeh Fakhraie, founder of Muslimah Media Watch, a diversity advocacy group, told Al Jazeera America that “She is going to be a window into the American Muslim experience” and that she “normalizes this idea of the American experience as Muslim.” Brett White of Comic Book Resources said, “With Kamala Khan, the daughter of Pakistani immigrants living in Jersey City, Marvel Comics has shown yet again that it wants to include groups of the American population that have yet to be personally inspired by their heroes.” Hussein Rashid writing for CNN said, "The character of Kamala Khan has the opportunity to offer something new to pop-culture portrayals of Muslims. She is born in the United States, appears to be part of the post-9/11 generation and is a teenager."Muaaz Khan of The Guardian compared Kamala Khan to Malala Yousafzai and indicated that the rest of entertainment industry should follow Marvel’s example. However, Dr. Leon Moosavi of the University of Liverpool felt that the character’s family would reinforce the stereotype of restrictive Muslim parents and that her shape-shifting ability resembled several anti-Muslim stereotypes, especially taqiyya.

Wired

WIRED: There’s been a lot of scrutiny of the character since the announcement, particularly because of her Muslim faith. Do you feel like there’s extra pressure to treat her as a representative for all Muslims?**
Wilson**: There’s a burden of representation that comes into play when there aren’t enough representatives of a certain group in popular culture. So the few ones that do exist come under increased scrutiny and pressure, because they’re expected to represent everybody. Obviously, you can’t do that with one character and you shouldn’t, because it would stifle the narrative and prevent them from becoming a fully-realized person. So I think in situations like that, you just have to tread lightly and trust your gut. Kamala is not a token anything in any way. She’s very much her own quirky, unique, wonderful person. She’s not a poster girl for her religion and she doesn’t fall into any neat little box.If you put the shoe on the other foot and said we’re going to have one Christian character that represents all Christians, the ridiculousness would be obvious right away. Are you talking about white Methodists from Oklahoma? Are you talking about Anglicans in Africa, who are the fastest growing group of Christians on planet Earth? It’s patently impossible for a Muslim character to represent “all Muslims.”