THE 99

by Sarika Arya

Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, and the rest of the world’s greatest superheroes are forming some modern allies with names like Noora, Wasi, Jabbar, Hadya, Jaleel (featured above) and many more – to be exact, the superhero league is being joined by 99 new humanitarian forces. ‘THE 99,’ by Dr. Naif al-Mutawa, is the first Islamic comic strip, intended to reveal the peaceful and tolerant face of Islam. Each superhero is named after one of Allah’s 99 virtues. Each character comes from a different country, each with a unique power symbolic of some attribute (like wisdom, generosity, mercy, and honesty), and none of the characters pray: this is intentional, in the hope that the story will attract children of all faiths.

In an open letter to his son published by BBC News, Dr. Naif explained how the 9/11 terrorist attacks moved him to “take back Islam from its hostage takers… I would go back to the very sources from which others took violent and hateful messages and offer messages of tolerance and peace in their place. I would give my heroes a Trojan horse in the form of THE 99. Islam was my Helen. I wanted her back.”

The heroes of the story have a special connection to the 1258 Mongol invasion of Baghdad, which destroyed the city and left the books from the great library lying in the Tigris River. In Dr. Naif’s story, some librarians escape the sacking of the city, placing 99 special stones in the river that would soak up the wisdom from the otherwise lost books. Centuries later, the 99 stones are discovered around the world by 99 heroes from 99 different countries.

Since its conception, THE 99 has come to sell about one million copies a year worldwide in several languages, has its own theme park in Kuwait, and is even being turned into an animated film. It has been covered by international press from the Guardian to Forbes Magazine, and has a special appeal to Western audiences with a love for graphic novels and Eastern readers who derive their culture values from the plot; even supremely Islamic societies like Saudi Arabia see the positive in Dr. Naif’s creation. However, Dr. Naif, as he indicates in his letter, is not yet satisfied, “… only when Jewish kids think that THE 99 characters are Jewish, and Christian kids think they’re Christian, and Muslim kids think they’re Muslim, and Hindu kids think they’re Hindu, that I will consider my vision as having been fully executed.” The addition of Islamic inspired superheros to the international league gives more legitimacy to that cliché graphic novel lesson: Good will always triumph over evil: no matter what the religious background, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, race, or superpower the do-gooder is defined by.