What is the purpose, one might ask, of creating, for instance, Muslim superheroes, much less studying them? Last year, The Muslim Vibe produced an article that gives one such answer to that question: “Erasure of the Muslim Superhero: The Effect of Islamophobia on Muslim Children.”

The lesson need not be limited to Muslim children alone — any oppressed or vilified group will face the same backlash, particularly among its most impressionable and least powerful subgroup, children. But, at this moment in American and world politics, that effect falls particularly hard on Muslim children. Therefore, as the author Afrah Mansour relates, there is a duty “an educator to make the younger generation value themselves” alongside others.

Erasure of the Muslim Superhero: The effect of Islamophobia on Muslim children

Muslim Superheroes: Comics, Islam, and Representation comes out in Spring 2017 from the ILEX Foundation.