There’s been a buzz around “The 99″ for some time, but the latest news is that these Islam-inspired superheroes will soon be making their debut on British TV.

They have proved a hit from Morocco to Indonesia and were recently named as one of the top 20 trends sweeping the world by Forbes magazine. Now they are being brought to British television by Endemol, the production company behind Big Brother, with a mission to instill Islamic values in children across all faiths. [...]

They were created by Dr Naif al-Mutawa, a clinical psychologist from Kuwait, who felt Muslim children needed a new set of heroes to look up to, to counter jihadist role models. [...]

Dr al-Mutawa hopes the cartoons will have a universal appeal. He said: “It is based on attributes such as generosity and mercy. These are not things that Islam has a monopoly over.”

One rather strange point in the Independent’s report was the claim that “there will never be a full cast of 99 superheroes since it is forbidden to depict all Allah’s attributes.” I can’t see what this statement is based on, and there are two further problems with it: (1) God’s attributes cannot truly be portrayed in the first place, but these are characters just reflecting some aspect of the “99 Names”; (2) Although it’s not commonly known, God has more than 99 names, as evidenced in a supplication taught by the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh), in which we say:

“O Allah, I am your servant, son of Your servant, son of Your maidservant. My forelock is in Your hand; Your command over me is forever executed; Your decree over me is just. I ask You by every name belonging to You which You named Yourself with, or revealed in Your Book, or You taught to any of Your creation, or You have preserved in the knowledge of the unseen with You, that You make the Qur’an the springtime of my heart and the light of my breast, and a departure for my sorrow and release from my anxiety.”