LONDON - The world’s first Muslim super heroes getting ready to fight for truth, justice and the Islamic way, and in the process will counter jihadist role models.

According to The Times, The 99, a Sharia-compliant version of the X-Men, has taken the Arab world by storm and has its sights set on the West.

The franchise, which was created as a cartoon strip three years ago to counter the effects of jihadist agitprop on Muslim minds, is poised to make its debut on British television this year.

Endemol, the Dutch company that made Big Brother internationally ubiquitous, is producing an animated series. Its mission: to instil old-fashioned Islamic values in Christian, Jewish and atheist children.he story follows a group of preternaturally gifted Muslims: The 99, each with a superpower that mirrors one of the 99 attributes of Allah.

The cast includes Jabbar, a Saudi Arabian Hulk-type figure with an improbable physique, and Darr the Afflicter, a paraplegic American who can manipulate nerve endings with his mind to trigger pain. There is also a character in a burka - Batina the Hidden.

The resulting franchise - a blend of fact, classic “kapow”-style action and Dan Brown-esque hokum - has proved a hit from Morocco to Indonesia and was branded recently one of the top 20 trends sweeping the world by Forbes magazine.

Beneath the rollicking storylines, however, there is a serious subtext. The man behind The 99 is Dr Naif al-Mutawa, a Kuwaiti who was a clinical psychologist previously.

Dr al-Mutawa said that the idea came to him while he was riding in a black cab in London from Edgware Road to Harrods, but its seed was sown years before when he worked at the survivors of political torture unit in Bellevue Hospital, New York.

Many of the young men he treated were Iraqis who had fled after being tortured under Saddam Hussein’s regime.

“It hit me that the stories I was hearing were from men who grew up believing that their leader, Saddam, was a hero, a role model - only to one day be tortured by him,” Dr al-Mutawa said.

“I decided the Arab world needed better role models.”

The conviction was reinforced by children’s literature that was circulating in the Middle East.

When Dr al-Mutawa visited potential financial backers he took a newspaper article that described the popularity in Nablus, a city under the rule of the Palestinian National Authority, of a sticker book known as the Intifada Album.

The book’s creator, a Hamas supporter who had sold 40,000 albums and 12 million stickers in four months, brushed off accusations that he was inciting hatred, saying: “There is no escaping the everyday reality of the intifada.”

Dr al-Mutawa, a father of five boys, disagreed. “This is not what I envisage for my children,” he said.

The 99 has faced resistance in the Middle East, particularly in Saudi Arabia, where it was only passed by the country’s censors when it gained financing from an Islamic bank with a Sharia board. There will never be 99 characters because it is forbidden to depict all of Allah’s attributes.

Despite its Islamic basis Dr al-Mutawa said that The 99 has universal appeal. He said: “It is based on attributes such as generosity and mercy. These are not things that Islam has a monopoly over.” (ANI)