Qahera: The Superheroine in Abaya and Hijab (@qaheracomic)

Comics have become a powerful vehicle for Arab-Muslim female artists to voice the issues that matter to them.

Comics have become a way to tackle social issues, favoring the surfacing of silenced voices. Women inequalities are one of the most prominent issues, taking space in magazines, being featured in editorials, and introducing strong female characters in the narratives, all of this greatly encouraged by the work of active Arab-Muslim female artists. They display their own feminism rooted in their local culture and connected, at the same time, with modernity.

A good example is Deena Mohamed. While still studying graphic design in Egypt in 2013, Deena began to draw Qahera as a comic and publish it, first on Tumblr and then on her website. The web page became a real viral phenomenon at a time when the country was witnessing massive social stress. Citizens found on the Internet and social media alternative ways to spread their concerns and interests. In this breeding ground, a different comic was born, starring a superheroine dressed in the traditional hijab, started dealing with issues such as sexual harassment, misogyny, or Islamophobia.

Qahera comprises such meanings as «conqueror», «victor» and «victorious» in its feminine conjugation and is the name by which the city of Cairo is known in Arabic. Initially conceived as a joke in English, the language of the online platform in which it was first shared, the webcomic acquired a new dimension when some people asked its young female illustrator to translate it into Arabic.

Qahera represents a very «down to Earth» type of superheroine. She questions her abilities and realizes that, sometimes, her efforts may not be enough to stop the abusers and criminals. She tries hard to defend the helpless, whether women, children, or animals, subject to different types of violence, and she must constantly justify her actions in front of the traditionalists.

Mohamed’s superheroine embodies a new way of approaching creative decisions: from the use of autobiographical references to choosing female protagonists or non-stereotyped women in the narrative. Arab-Muslim comic artists like Deena Mohamed display their own feminism rooted in their local culture and connected, at the same time, with modernity.

According to the author, Qahera responds to the craving for connectivity that prevails today, using a visual language invented in the West -comics- to overturn preconceived ideas about women in Arab-Muslim culture. Like other comic illustrators, such as Safiyya Hosein or Maya Zankoul, for Deena, the fact that Muslim women now have multiple fictional representations is empowering on a personal level because that means that many of them are being included in comics. Nevertheless, she criticizes Western or «white» feminism, which, according to her, places gender ahead of other affiliations, such as race and social class. Egypt currently has many other brilliant female illustrators and visual artists in Egypt such as Doaa el-Adl, Mona Abdurrahman, Tasneem el Meshad, Asmaa Magdi, and Yasmine Hosam.