Dr. Naif Al-Mutawa is the creator of THE 99, the first group of comic superheroes born of an Islamic archetype. THE 99 has received positive attention from the world’s media. Forbes named THE 99 as one of the top 20 trends sweeping the globe and President Barack Obama praised Dr. Naif and THE 99 as perhaps the most innovative of the thousands of new entrepreneurs viewed by his Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship.

Dr. Naif has a PhD in Clinical Psychology from Long Island University where he also earned a Masters Degree in Clinical Psychology. He holds a Masters in Organizational Psychology from Teacher’s College, Columbia University and an MBA, also from Columbia University. He earned his undergraduate degree from Tufts University, where he triple majored in clinical psychology, English literature and history.

Dr. Naif has extensive clinical experience working with former prisoners of war in Kuwait and the Survivors of Political Torture unit of Bellevue Hospital in New York. He has seen first hand the cancer that intolerance can bring to any society. His direct contact with the horrors of people tortured because of their religious and political beliefs, led to his writing a timeless children’s tale that won a UNESCO prize for literature in the service of tolerance.

1 of 8

Below are exerpts from Arifa Akbar‘s interview on The Independent. Arifa Akbar is literary editor of The Independent and i newspapers. She has worked at The Independent since 2001 as a news reporter and arts correspondent before joining the books desk in 2009. She was a judge for the Orwell Prize for books 2013, and the Fiction Uncovered Prize 2014.

Just over a decade ago, Naif Al-Mutawa had a lightbulb moment. Sitting in the back of a London taxi, he decided not to follow his chosen field of study – despite two psychology degrees and a freshly acquired doctorate – but to create comic books instead.

Enter The 99. Drawing on the strong-men and -women archetypes in the Marvel and DC universes, and now in their 10th year, Al-Mutawa’s comic books have their own fleet of superheroes: an all-Islamic cast gifted with special powers embodying the 99 attributes of Allah – such as generosity, wisdom and strength – that are named in the Koran.

These paragons are in perpetual battle with Rughal, an Osama bin Laden-inspired villain who could just as well be the face of Isis or “any other self-styled messiah” in our post-al-Qaeda world. And each superhero, from a different part of the world, is a protégé of their mentor, Dr Razwi, who like Dr Mutawa himself, is a trained clinical psychologist, fashioned from the “best” imaginary version of himself.

Launched in 2006 – first in Kuwait after the approval of the state’s Ministry of Information, then in America and the rest of the world – The 99 was hailed as an exemplary model of inter-faith peace and tolerance by Barack Obama, and Dr Mutawa was invited to give two TED talks. He has since been featured in Forbes magazine, won prizes in the Gulf region and gained the approval of the Saudi state.

However, for some he is a defender not of peace but of profanity: ironically, he has hardline detractors in both America and the Arab world, though they hate him for opposing reasons. To US conservatives, he is a terrorist and a pawn of hardline Islam; to Islamist Arabs, he is a heretic and a pawn of the liberal West.

Both camps have, in the past decade, warned of the dangers of his creation and called for it to be banned. America’s God-squad even created enough moral panic about “radicalising children” to halt a Hollywood adaptation of The 99 – produced by Endemol and scripted by the teams behind Star Wars, X-Men and Spider-Man – from being shown in US cinemas or on its network television. (This leads Al-Mutawa to joke: “I have a fatwa from Fox News!”)

But now there is a more serious threat from within his home country. While the Kuwaiti government has endorsed his work, not everyone agrees with its message. In the past year, a Twitter campaign has accused him of being a blasphemer who should be brought to trial; and a legal case has been launched against him – not by the state, but by a fellow Kuwaiti suing him for heresy. (If he loses – and he firmly believes he won’t – he could face a prison sentence.)

Since then, Al-Mutawa has received a hail of abuse and death threats. culminating in an ironic sequence of events: “Shortly before New Year 2014, I received an email informing me that The 99 had won in the media category of the Islamic Economy Awards [in Dubai]. A few days later, I received an email from my lawyer updating me on the case lodged against me in Kuwait for heresy and insulting religion through The 99. This is the same book President Obama, Sheikh Mohammed, even His Highness the Emir of Kuwait, publicly endorsed as being a bastion of tolerance.”

How to negotiate this impossible position of being both hero and villain to two usually opposed camps? Judging from appearances, Al-Mutawa is not letting his detractors win. At the age of 43, and a father of five young boys, he has an incorrigibly Tigger-ish quality. Meeting him at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature in Dubai, he is warm and loquacious to the legion of fans who mob him – parents and children alike, from India, America, Britain and the host country’s multi-faith ex-pat community. He will admit, though, that the past year has taken its toll. He was particularly shaken by the chilling Twitter hashtag, #whowillkillDrNaif, that drummed up hate against him last summer. He is frustrated to be summoned to court later this month – on 26 March – not least because the prosecution managed to secure a fatwa from the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, who called his work “evil”.

Please visit the website for the full article.