What we wanted to do was tell a story that felt relatable to anyone who's been a teenager. We haven't all been a second-generation Pakistani-American girl with superpowers, but we've all been 16 and awkward.
— G. Willow Wilson
Because the traditional mode of dress for Muslim women is so distinct - the headcovering, which is not there for guys - women carry a greater burden of representation than Muslim men do in non-Muslim societies.
There's a burden of representation that comes into play when there aren't enough representatives of a certain group in popular culture.
In the West, anything that must be hidden is suspect; availability and honesty are interlinked. This clashes irreconcilably with Islam, where the things that are most precious, most perfect and most holy are always hidden: the Kaaba, the faces of prophets and angels, a woman's body, Heaven.
When I am in Egypt, I am along for the ride - I am a privileged outsider, but an outsider nonetheless.
When we read fiction, we want to get outside of ourselves and are able to see from a perspective we haven't seen through before. That can be very powerful.
In many countries in the Middle East - and this is changing in the wake of the Arab Spring - but for a long time, censorship of books and film was a very big deal. There were books you couldn't buy; things with political content would be censored, but there were some genres of books and film that the censors just didn't understand.
Sometimes, by using the most over-the-top, ridiculous plot device you can imagine, you get some interesting little conflicts and cool things that you might not otherwise have a chance to explore.
I think comics are really part of The Zeitgeist. They reflect back to us the issues that we're concerned about in the time they are written.
I think that's a huge theme in superhero books across the board: When you have this massive power, how do you use it responsibly? When do you intervene? Those are the big questions.
That's something the head scarf, in a symbolic way, is meant to do in Arabic culture: it defines your relationship to your husband and the men of your family differently than your relationship to the average guy on the street you've never met.
As a writer and a mom, I wish I could split into two or three different people so I could be with my kids all day, write all day, and go out and do the interviews all day. Multiplicity woman!
I was born in New Jersey and lived there until I was about 10, so Jersey is in my roots.
I write about real life as it is lived by the young American Muslim women that I've had the pleasure of meeting throughout the course of my travels as a writer and being able to speak in different places and meet different people at signings and things.
Anytime you're writing stories about a group of people with whom you have limited experience, there's a lot of guesswork.
I think lot of Muslims have gotten fatigued by the way Muslim characters, even 'positive' ones, are portrayed in the media.
It seems like whenever you write about Muslims, people assume that you're writing about the Quran, you are writing about the Prophet Muhammad. There's no sense that Muslims are capable of individualism, that they're capable of making mistakes that are somehow not connected to Islam.
If you love things or ideas or people that contradict each other, you have to be prepared to fight for every square inch of intellectual real estate you occupy.
'Butterfly Mosque' came out of the emails I wrote to family and friends back home after moving to Egypt.
Americans look at the Middle East as a source of trauma because of 9/11. At the same time, I could see the fear going on in the Middle East as well - which would be the next country to be invaded or sanctioned? Being around those tensions was traumatic for me.
I'm not a programmer myself, but I am a very, very picky end user of technology. I like my machines to work they way they're supposed to, all the time.
I keep setting the bar higher for myself in terms of what I'm trying to accomplish.
I have younger friends who are in this pinch where they feel they've been counted out before they've had a chance to prove themselves. They've inherited a lot of debt - not just student debt but environmental debt, political debt. They really feel squeezed.
I think any time you have a super team, whether it's all men or all women or both, what you have are people with very unique strengths that aren't always totally compatible.
I think people, especially in the Muslim community, are rightly cautious any time you hear, 'Oh, there's going to be a Muslim character.'
When you write for a comic series, many superheroes have 60 or some years of history that you are coming into.
When I need guidance or just to kvetch or to bounce ideas off of people, I go to Gail Simone, who is very much kind of the den mother of all of us who are working comics.
In comics, we're all weird together. I can go to a comics convention and not stand out, even though I'm the only woman in a headscarf there, because the guy next to me has a beard and a Sailor Moon costume.
The first comic I ever read was an 'X-Men' themed anti-smoking PSA they gave out in health class when I was about 10.
It's patently impossible for a Muslim character to represent 'all Muslims.'
I don't know that Islam has ever been a subject of anything that I've written. I think Muslims have often been, but those are two very different things.
I think every Muslim woman has to feel the world out for herself.
The 'Ms. Marvel' mantle has passed to 'Kamala Khan,' a high school student from Jersey City who struggles to reconcile being an American teenager with the conservative customs of her Pakistani Muslim family.
I'm writing in English; I'm writing for a Western audience, but the people I'm surrounded by in my daily life are mostly non-white.
Some languages expand not only your ability to speak to different people but what you're able to think.
So many people are of mixed heritage; everyone is from somewhere else.
I think all these pop cultural media often reflect conversations we're having in the real world at that moment in time. I think one of the big conversations we're having as a culture is we thought we'd solved sexism and racism, and we're realizing more and more that we haven't.
The great thing about Cairo is the vast majority of women wear some kind of head scarf, but they are also very fashion-conscious. They love bright colors.
People love to talk about new and different. They don't always love to buy and read new and different.
Superheroes don't often get their powers in one fell swoop. It's like superhero puberty.
Being a Muslim in America, I've noticed that there's a ton of crossover between the Muslim community and geekdom.
Despite all the criticisms that have been leveled at the comics community, both in terms of fans and creators, I have always felt more comfortable and accepted in the comics community than I have in any other medium of publishing that I've had the pleasure of working in.
