#sheikh abdullah

From Ms. Marvel: Mutant Menace #001, “Mutant Watch”

Art by Scott Godlewski and Erick Arciniega

As Kamala Khan is sent home to New Jersey, she gets an unwelcome sight when she sees a zombie version of herself terrorizing the city. The Zombie Ms Marvel is wearing the old costume and has stretchy powers but there is a difference - the zombie has another superpower. Just before Lockjaw could help Kamala to teleport away, they get attacked by Zombie Ms Marvel.

Kamala is pinned down by a zombie version of herself when the evil scientist comes in and explains to her that the zombie has hard light which happens to be an untapped mutant power. The evil scientist claims that she is a big fan of Kamala. However, Kamala is having none of it so she shrinks down before getting smashed by the zombie. While Kamala and Zombie Ms Marvel are fighting, the former (Kamala) sees a group of witnesses who are her family and the Imam from the mosque, gathering around to watch the fight. The confused witnesses could not tell which of the two Ms Marvels is the real one. Just when Kamala tries to tell the bystanders to run, Zombie Ms Marvel attacks them with hard light, aiming for her family. The Imam pushes Kamala's brother out of the way but gets hit by the hard light, knocking him out. The enraged Kamala Khan gets herself together and pushes the zombie into the river and fights harder than ever. Kamala destroys Zombie Ms Marvel by squeezing her too hard until the hard light shatters. As Kamala scolds the evil scientist, she gets zapped to unconsciousness, leaving the evil scientist to gloat over her failure.

At the aftermath of the fight with Zombie Ms Marvel, Kamala's popularity as a resident New Jersey superhero has collapsed. The Imam is in a coma, her friends and family have turned their backs on Ms Marvel and the even X-Men (especially Kitty Pryde) are unsympathetic to her plight. However, the only person who still supports Kamala as a friend is Bruno Carrelli.

This is a very important concept that a lot of people struggle to understand. Some people aggressively don't want to understand it, to the point that I've seen this show blamed as if it invented the concept of judging people by their actions.

What Sheikh Abdullah's talking about is a fundamental shift in how we interpret concepts of good and evil. One that seems so basic when you say it out loud but that is inexplicably difficult for a lot of people to grasp. I don't know how it is in Muslim culture, but in the circles I come from, I see people struggle with this all the time.

The idea is this: People do good things and people do bad things. Try to do good things. That's it. It seems so simple as a system of morality. You would think, you would really think, that this is the baseline system of morality that people just naturally follow.

But it's not.

Many people treat good and bad as intrinsic qualities of individuals. The things that good people do are good. And the things that bad people do? Those things are bad. It's not even about what the thing is; The same act can be good if done by a good person but bad if done by a bad person. The morality of the act is defined by the intrinsic goodness or badness of the person doing it.

If a person agreed to be good steals a loaf of bread, then the assumption follows that they must be desperate. They're hungry. They're going through tough times. But if a person agreed to be bad steals a loaf of bread, then it's because they're bad. Bad people steal. They're just expressing their inner badness.

Nobody stops to ask why the person stole the loaf of bread. They just trust their inner judgment on the person's goodness or badness to define the act for them.

In fact, this often applies to how we consume media. We've seen and discussed quite a bit of it right here in the MCU. Heroic characters have gotten away with doing some horrifying shit in the MCU, haven't they? From serial murders to building a WMD that annihilated a sovereign country, with nary a slap on the wrist. The stories we consume just throw those things out there and keep right on trucking like the characters we're supposed to root for aren't horrifying criminals.

Why? Because of an agreement between the writer and audience that these characters are good people. So even when they're engaging in mass murder, even when they launch attacks on populated cities or destroy a country with their hubris, we are not really meant to judge them harshly for it. Because they are good, and the things they do are good.

Meanwhile, characters like Karli Morgenthau are meant to be judged harshly, meant to be condemned, even when every word out of their mouth is right. Because she is the villain, and so her works are bad.

This is called Protagonist-Centered Morality. It's the application of "Things are good when done by good people and bad when done by bad people" applied to the narrative roles of the protagonist and antagonist. It's the obligatory assumption of intrinsic goodness and intrinsic badness coloring perception of the actions being taken by the characters onscreen.

It's the reason that, whenever you're writing a story, you should really take some time to think about your hero and your villain, and to ask: "What actually makes this character good and that character bad? What am I actually doing to give the audience reason to agree with the narrative assessment of their roles?"

And it's something that, once you start to see it in the real world, you can't really unsee it. Xenophobia thrives on Good People/Bad People logic; Categories that are just as easily defined as In-Group and Out-Group. A conservative will accuse Mexicans of being drug addicts and then take a hit of cocaine without an ounce of self-awareness, because drugs are only bad when they're done by Bad People.

(Personally, I think drugs are fine in general even though the hardest substance I use is caffeine, but that's beside the point. Point is, a lot of political hypocrisy is itself driven by Good People/Bad People logic. It's a hell of a trip.)

if it wasnt obvious from my last few posts i watched the ms marvel finale !!! here are my thoughts, there's quite a bit:

kamala khan.

my precious baby, i love her. she's going to be one hell of a superhero. she already is. her costume was just *screams*. iman vellani youve done such a good job, thank you so so much <3

the cinematography.

fucking beautiful. i keep thinking about the scene texting scene btwn her & bruno in the first episode. the visuals were stunning. her powers (which we'll get into later) were so so pretty to look at. they deserve all the praise they're getting for this & more

her origin & her powers.

i will admit, as someone who has read the comics, this felt...weird. i do, however, understand that they had to be rewritten to accommodate the mcu reality. i just hope it gets written out well (& also the somehow her inhuman origins stay canon in the mcu)

bruno carrelli.

im team brunokamala!! i loved loved LOVED mcu bruno, i really dont understand the slander. even if youre team kareem or kamran, i still dont get how youd hate him. i genuinely hope he & kamala end up together, their dynamic would be AMAZING. (also the chemistry btwn him & kamran...interesting)

nakia bahadir.

our second nakia of the mcu & this one's as badass as the first one. LOVE her. i need more nakia content in the future idc. also...zoe x nakia??

red dagger/kareem.

such a cool character. genuinely hope we see more of him. desi badass slayy (he & kamala had so much chemistry BUT i still hope she ends up with bruno <3)

the storyline.

questionable. as a south asian, i rlly liked that they went into the partition. the najma plot was kinda eh though. her redemption felt so random, as if they just needed a way to give kamran his powers.

her family.

they were so much more lenient than 90% of south asian parents like...woah. her scenes with them in the final episode, especially when she gets her suit were just :")

desi rep.

and finally, the representation. the partition parts were haunting. having all the new south asian characters is heartwarming. im especially happy that we have kareem be a native pakistani & not an immigrant.

(Also Kamala referring to this Eid as the “lesser” one when in actuality it’s the longer one and the one that’s sort of a bigger deal made me go like 🤔🤔🤔)

I also love that they had Sheikh Abdullah read Quran and also had him say Mabrook at the wedding! (Mabrook meaning congratulations in Arabic)

And the Mosque scene!! Nakia calling them out, and Sheikh Abdullah requesting that they “remove their shows next time”. It was completely gross how they just walked on the sajadat (prayer mats) like that. We literally pray on those and our noses and heads and hands touch that.