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THE 99 - Characters

RUGHAL

Real Name: Unknown
Home Country: Spain
Age: 589
Height: 193 cm
Weight: 83 kg
Eye Color: Blue
Hair Color: Black
Base of Operation: Mamluk International, Hong Kong
. . .

Islamic superheroes take aim at Muslim youth

October 12, 2006

www.stuff.co.nz
New Zealand Online Magazine

BOSTON: In Saudi Arabia, a gawky teenager is transformed into a hulking creature. In Paris, a historian chases legends about mystical gemstones. In South Africa, a boy discovers a sparkling rock with healing powers.The characters are from a new genre of superheroes endowed with Muslim virtues and aimed at young Muslims in a comic book series called THE 99.
Read full article on www.stuff.co.nz

Its creator, 35-year-old Naif Al-Mutawa, admits the series - based on 99 heroes who embody the 99 attributes of God in Islam - is tricky in a religion where attempts to personify God's power can spark protests and even death threats.

But the US-educated Al-Mutawa hopes to create a new Islamic pop culture. His Kuwait-based company is also rolling out classic US comic books - from Archie to Spider-Man and The Incredible Hulk - to the Middle East in the Arabic language.

On Thursday he won the crucial blessing of Muslim clerics who manage a Bahrain investment bank. It approved $US25 million to help finance his company, Teshkeel Media Group, and pay for plans to launch an animated THE 99 series for television.

"If you look at the superheroes who exist in the world today, you have two groups: the group that comes out of North America and the group that comes out of Japan," Al-Mutawa, who was born in Kuwait and spent much of his adult life in the United States, said during a visit to Boston.

"The idea of using religion as a modern-day archetype is not new - the West has been using it for a long time. No one has really mined Islamic culture for that," he said.

The plot of THE 99 blends a pivotal point in Islamic history - the sacking of Baghdad by the Mongols in the 13th century - with a big dose of fantasy.

In the story, the wisdom, tolerance and spirituality of the Baghdad caliphate are coded in 99 gemstones as the barbarians gather at Baghdad's gate. They are smuggled out as three prayer beads of 33 stones each and scattered around the world.

Heroes such as Jabbar the Powerful and Mumita the Destroyer must find them before the bad guys do.

"It's a metaphor for the spreading of Islam without mentioning Islam. These comics have no mention of Islam or the prophet or prayer," Al-Mutawa told Reuters in an interview.

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