Comic books have been an inspiration for many but it is good to see someone actually using the ideas to become the heroes of real life. A street artist, in San Francisco, is using popular comics franchise Marvel’s first ever Muslim super heroine, Ms. Marvel aka Kamala Khan, to fight against racism.

With the name of Islam being dragged through mud because of terrorist attacks all around the world, an American blogger recently paid for promoting anti-Islamic adverts. American Freedom Defense Initiative’s Pamela Geller has paid for these advertisements, published on the San Francisco’s public buses, promoting Islam as a counterpart of Nazism.


The original banner featured a Muslim leader with Hitler and Zionism opponent Haj Amin al-Husseini with the captions, “Islamic Jew-Hatred: It’s In The Quran” And “End all aid to the Islamic Countries.” While San Francisco’s Municipal Transit Authority and other city leaders do not support such hate messages, they are all bound by the First Amendment’s freedom of speech clause and can do nothing to prevent the promotion of such messages.

Fortunately, some real life superhero has plastered the face of Marvel’s Muslim character, a Pakistan-American woman, Kamala Khan, over the original picture and covered the caption with hearts and phrases like “Calling all Bigotry Busters”, “free speech isn’t a license to spread hate” and “stamp out racism!” The work of the street artist, defending Islam and promoting anti-racism, were first noticed by the Facebook group Street Cred – Advertising for the People.

 

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This cultural response to these hateful ads is heroic in the truest sense. Instead of responding by protesting on the roads, using offensive methods and stooping to their level to defend Islam, the artist has taken the higher road and used the antagonist’s own idea of freedom of speech to spread peace. Frankly speaking, the entire Avengers team couldn’t have come up with a better idea!

The idea has been appreciated by the writer of the comic character too.