DC Comics relentlessly trying to buttress the faltering narrative of “Islamophobia” by portraying its new Muslim superhero as a victim of relentless anti-Muslim hate: “DC Comics introduces new Muslim superhero,” by Omar Sacirbey for Religion News Service, September 7:
Green was the favorite color of Islam’s founder Prophet Muhammad, so it seems fitting that the world’s latest Muslim superhero has joined the small but diverse circle of superheroes who”ve worn the Green Lantern ring.
American comics giant DC Comics introduced Simon Baz to readers Wednesday (Sep. 5) in a special issue explaining the character’s origins. Baz is a Lebanese American from Dearborn, Mich., like his maker, DC creative director Geoff Johns, who weaves stories that Muslims, Arabs, and other Americans can relate to into the heroic plot.
For example, a young Baz and his family, the mother in an Islamic headscarf, watch in horror as the terrorist attacks of 9/11 unfold on their television. The next panels show men wiping “Go home” and other graffiti from the wall of an “Islamic Center of America,” bullies ripping a headscarf off Baz’s sister Sira, and Baz going through a security check.
Baz is a laid-off auto engineer who turns to auto theft but gets caught after stealing a van that, unbeknownst to him, is packed with explosives. The husky, olive-skinned Baz soon finds himself being interrogated by two dark-suited agents in a sequence of panels that hits on Islamophobia, illegal detentions, torture, and the war on terror.
“I”m a car thief, not a terrorist,” Baz, wearing an orange jumpsuit that evokes those worn by inmates at Guantanamo Bay, tells his interrogators in one scene. In another, a policeman tells Baz, “Relax Muhammad,” as he tries to strap him onto a torture table….
Like other Muslim superheroes, Baz has been criticized by anti-Muslim websites. Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch accused DC Comics of abetting jihad by promoting a false notion of Muslim victimhood, writing that “the goal of the victimhood game is to deflect attention away from jihad and Islamic supremacism.”
Johns was unavailable for comment.
Sacirbey didn’t even bother to try to contact me. He is, of course, free to take any quote he wants from this site, but by putting several paragraphs in between the material about Baz being a victim of “Islamophobia” and my quote about Muslim victimhood, he obscures the connection between the two, which I’m sure was part of his purpose.
And Sacirbey also includes the ever-present smear of “anti-Muslim” — as if fighting for freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and equality of rights for all people were against a group of people as such. Those who defame us as “anti-Muslim,” of course, want to portray us as the equivalent of race bigots like neo-Nazis and the KKK. A common charge, but no less libelous and defamatory for being often repeated.