What Chris Roberson has to say about the Superman story with a Muslim character

The leftist Comics Alliance of the AOL network went an spoke with Chris Roberson, the writer who'd taken over the helm from J. Michael Stracynski on his "Grounded" storyline on Superman, and this is what he had to tell them in connection with the canned story involving a Muslim character:

I first understood that there would probably be problems when the cover was released with the solicitations, I think maybe in February, because the cover that you saw in the solicitations was not the cover. It was like a third of the cover, and they had cropped out all of these angry hands grasping at him, which you can see in the letters column of Superman #711, where they show the full cover, but without the Superman shield around the symbol, because DC had decided by that point that they didn't want to associate an Arabic letter with the Superman shield.

The script went through, I think, five or six full revisions. It was lettered and re-lettered several times by the time it was approved by editorial. All of it was toned down -- all of the fear and hysteria about a super-powered Muslim was all toned down until by the final version that was about to go to the printer, it was two disgruntled people in two different crowds, kind of muttering under their breath "I don't trust that guy, I think he's a terrorist." I don't even think we used the word "terrorist." I think it was just "I think he's a Muslim, I don't trust that guy."

The end of the issue was Superman saying what would seem in normal circumstances to be a reasonable position, which was "Maybe this wouldn't be so much of an issue if you weren't wearing an Arabic letter on your chest. Maybe if people couldn't see your face, if you wore a mask, if they couldn't see that you were an Arab, you could help them without running into this kind of static." And the kid says to Superman, "Well you're from another planet. You're an alien. You wear a Kryptonian symbol on your chest and last year," at least in the current continuity, "your people tried to destroy the Earth. You don't hide who you are, and you're accepted as an American. Why should I be any different?"

Tsk tsk tsk. I think the best argument we can make in reply to this is: who cares if he's an Arab any more than Nightcrawler/Kurt Wagner is of German background? What really matters is his religion. What also matters is whether Roberson himself recognizes that there could be such a thing as a bad religion. And there's a lot of questions to be asked about whether anyone who worships a religion founded by a vile man (Muhammed) who forced an underaged girl, Aisha, to marry him, can be considered totally reliable or even sane to begin with. Is someone with the kind of record Muhammed has someone any sane person should respect, or even blandly tolerate?

Of course it's not the character Sinbad's fault. Heck, he may not have even been characterized as a Muslim when he first appeared 2 decades ago. But Roberson and company could've done a lot of good if they'd depicted the former Sinbad as an Arabic teen who shuns the Religion of Rape and even wears a t-shirt in Arabic that says "I will not submit", as per one that Michelle Malkin alludes to over here. Sinbad could even discuss with Superman the shame tyrants like Muhammed have cast upon people of Sinbad's ethnic background, and Superman could remind him, as per Ezekiel 18:20, that the sins of the father do not fall upon the child. Certainly not if the child makes an effort to avoid the errors of the father.

(Of course, let's remember that Muhammed himself never had any real biological sons; he only had daughters.)

The part about Superman's people trying to destroy the earth alludes to a recent storyline where a community of Kryptonians turned up and almost did cause destruction. It was a pretty bad story in its own way, as it tarnished everything the Kryptonian background was meant to be about.

Again, I do believe it's for the best that the story was scrapped, because all the signs suggest it could've been very unpleasant to Americans, subtly or otherwise.