I think every Muslim woman has to feel the world out for herself.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There's a burden of representation that comes into play when there aren't enough representatives of a certain group in popular culture.
It's patently impossible for a Muslim character to represent 'all Muslims.'
I think lot of Muslims have gotten fatigued by the way Muslim characters, even 'positive' ones, are portrayed in the media.
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.
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.
Anytime you're writing stories about a group of people with whom you have limited experience, there's a lot of guesswork.
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.
I've wanted to write comics ever since I figured out it was a job.
'Lost' makes a lot of sense to me, philosophically.
To me, writing an ongoing series feels like driving a freight train downhill. All you can do is steer and pray.
The more you put out there, the more you have to resolve. 'Air' is the most literary comic I've written so far, and that poses problems.
A lot of my writer friends - some of whom are brilliant - work when the Muse calls them, for lack of a better description. You know, days of nothing, then this creative burst where they write for 36 hours straight fueled by caffeine and idealism.
It took me a long time to square with the fact that none of my experiences are typical - I'm not a typical American, but I'm also not a typical Muslim.
I tend to deal with characters who are sort of at that same point of wrestling with, 'Who am I going to be as an adult? What do I believe? How am I defining myself in the context of my culture and my peer groups, my family?'
In Arab Islamic society, it is traditionally taboo to criticize the lifestyle or personal philosophy of any practicing Muslim.
