Saturday, October 01, 2011

Muslim manga drawing

The Straits Times has an article about Islamists who draw manga. Only the first few paragraphs are available without logging in/subscribing:
THE JAKARTA POST/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) - While some would associate anime and manga - the Japanese take on cartoons - with short skirts and flowing, multi-coloured hair, the spread of the art to various countries has given birth to a flow of hijab-donning doe-eyed characters.

These characters are easily found in various bookstores in Jakarta. Illustrations drawn in manga style decorate the covers of Islamic books and fiction that convey religious messages or that have characters that are depicted as Muslims.

Studio Siput, a small art studio comprising three workers, has experience providing illustrations for Islamic books. Their latest works are the illustrations for a series of children's books called Princess Jihan.

The princess on the covers of the books wears a crown and a flowing dress, but unlike several princesses already familiar to children, she does not bare her hair, neck or arms. The princess' head is covered with a glittering headscarf and one of the titles in the series is The Miracle of Reading the Quran.
Ugh. No thanks, I'd rather not waste time on something so insulting to the female intellect. It's true that some manga storytellers in Japan can come up with vicious treatment of women, but this isn't doing any better by advocating tent-wearing and the Koran to boot. What it does signal however, is that if you know where to look, you could find books with manga-style drawing in the Muslim world that contain violence against women that could be even worse than what some Japanese manga feature.

Better to turn to American-drawn manga books, which hopefully have a much better approach.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

youre wrong i am a muslim and drawing animate beings (even animals) its forbbiden. And the animator creators will be asked ''Who are you who copy the perfect being that God created'' and those who draw manga will burn in fire of hell
i personally couldnt agree with this cause drawing manga is like MY LIFE. but slowly (with a lot of pain) i got over it. sometimes i think i should draw again but i cant