On Writing Muslim Characters - A Discussion

I received an email inquiry from a reader and fellow author about how to best to go about incorporating Muslim characters into a fantasy world (specifically, Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V), and the sender gave me permission to post his message and my response to it, since I thought it would be a neat discussion to share.

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Found your online essay about Samirah al-Abbas--it was very incisive and I am grateful for having found it, especially since you're another Muslim Canadian who's a bit into the deep end of nerdiness. It gets a bit lonely when my sister is the only other Muslim I know who orbits any of the same interests as me.

I've read the Magnus Chase books, and while I was just happy to see a female Muslim character like Samirah at the time, I've gradually grown a bit more concerned about her juxtaposition with all the...stuff. Your essay helped clarify a lot for me.

I have only just learned of your fiction writings, and I am very interested in reading them--I am quite sick of religion being denigrated, absent, or restricted to fictional ones in sci-fi and fantasy, especially stories that are supposed to be in the future.

To be honest, though, my main impetus for reaching out is that I would like to know if you consider the context of Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V problematic to include Muslim characters in. I'm trying to write a fanfiction for it, and while I was already rewriting the fantastical aspects so that they didn't infringe upon any tenet of Islam, your remark about context got me worrying again about whether the context of Yugioh would send the wrong message. I'd write fanfiction for something that wouldn't even involve these questions, but I specifically want to put Muslim characters where there's a lack of them.

I wouldn't bother you with this, but none of the scholars/imams whom I know are familiar enough with this to really be able to answer, and you know this kind of thing, even if not Yugioh in particular. I already ditched the idea of doing fanfiction for the earlier series in the Yugioh franchise because occultist/pagan stuff is pretty heavily enmeshed in the plot, and Arc-V is mostly sci-fi, but the materialistic aspect of the card game does still concern me a bit. There isn't any "god" problem to be had with Arc-V, the only issue is maybe some soul-related things, but we've explicitly not been told much about that, so I figure I have a bit of room there.

P.S. I am going to have two original Muslim characters as my main characters, who will be 14 years old for reasons involving the plot of the show. Do you think that's too young for an arranged marriage to be in the works for them? It wouldn't necessarily have been formally arranged yet, and they're already going to be somewhat close regardless. I just thought you would know better than me whether that might go over too much the wrong way--I was planning on it depicting it as being so that my characters can have a halal relationship.

P.P.S. I'm only just 21, and haven't published anything online let alone otherwise. I genuinely admire you even though I only just found out about you.

P.P.P.S. Please keep up this good work!

Salaam,

Thanks for reaching out to me! I'm glad you enjoyed my essay, and I'm thrilled you found me and then reached out to me as a fellow nerd. Before I get into everything, I do wanna make it clear that I'm not a scholar but I'm answering you with the best of intentions and with my (limited) knowledge and understanding, and Allah knows best.

So I don't really know anything about Yu-Gi-Oh! or Arc-V, but I did a quick perusal through wiki about it and I think your fanfiction should be fine? When I talked about Samirah and the issue of her being Muslim in the context of her world, it was because she lived in a universe where there is a real and existing pantheon which necessarily makes it impossible for there to be God as Muslims believe Him to be.

You said there isn't any 'god problem' in the Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V universe, so I should think having Muslim characters should be fine. If there are beings that people in the universe of Yu-Gi-Oh! believe are gods, but aren't actually—are instead some sort of magical being with powers etc.—that's also totally fine.

(For example, if in the Magnus Chase universe, the Asgard gods were revealed to be...I don't know, a magical race of superhumans that 'regular' humans believed were gods and worshipped them as such, Samirah could quite happily and easily be a Muslim still believing in truth, and I wouldn't have an issue with it).

It's excellent that you're concerned about this, and I have a couple of suggestions for you, if you want them, for anything you might write in the future that might deal with this. In which case, I'd advise you to do one or all of the following, as you need!

• have your Muslim characters mention something about the gods not being real
• have some in-universe note or explanation about 'false gods'
• have a magical/scientific/anthropological explanation as to what these beings actually are and why they were/are worshipped by whoever believes in them
• put in a note for your readers explaining how, in your fic, the gods aren't actually gods, and why you made that choice (i.e. in order to write Muslim characters into the universe)

As for magic (because you mentioned there were paganist/occultist stuff in other Yu-Gi-Oh! arcs)...hm. Magic in real life is evil, has to do with djinn, and is haram for Muslims to take part in. But when it comes to fiction...people might disagree with me, but I think fictional magic is not a problem. I think it's fine to have Muslim characters who practice fictional magic or have magical powers, as long as it's not anything like real magic, has nothing to do with djinn, doesn't require them renouncing their beliefs or not fulfilling some tenet of Islam.

For example, I wouldn't think it would be a good idea to have a Muslim who practices human sacrifice, or does spells relating to blood or possession, or something like that, unless the author wanted to point out some corruption or hypocrisy in this character, because Muslims are people and people are flawed etc etc. However, I can easily imagine a Muslim character in the world of, say, Harry Potter being a witch or wizard, because that magic is nothing like real magic and doesn't infringe on Muslim beliefs.

Again, I'm not a scholar, so I could be wrong or missing something.

As for your characters being in the process of an arranged marriage: that's totally up to you! I absolutely get wanting them to be in a halal relationship, and so setting up an arranged marriage for them allows for that. I know some people, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, may be uncomfortable with that, out of concern for your characters being so young, or having a choice in who they marry, and being able to fall in love or out of love etc, so it's up to you how you wanna depict it. This is, I think, more of a personal preference than a theological issue, so feel free to explore the whole idea the way you want to.

I hope this (very long) message helped and answered your questions! Tawfeeq with your writing and I hope you find more fellow nerdy Muslims to connect with! If there's anything else you wanted to talk about, or if you wanted more clarity on something I said, do let me know! I'm always happy to chat.
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Happy reading and writing! 

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