It’s Iimi! Busted!

It was bound to happen. Kismetta lacked prudence when she asked her questions and ended up offending everyone at the mosque by her aggressive tone. When the Mosque calls to tell her mother about her behavior, how will Kismetta respond to being BUSTED.

Preliminary Notes: While the arguments presented here are ones that I have seen Muslims use online, I don’t want to have cartoonish villains as foils for the main characters. So, in portraying the annoyed reactions to Kismetta’s questions, I asked myself how those attending a Catholic youth group might respond to a Catholic youth asking those kinds of questions in a similar tone. 

Zara (Bahrudin’s second wife probably needs her name explained for Western readers. The naming conventions of the UAE would be her given name (Zara) + bint (daughter of) her father’s name (Raziq) + ibn (son of) her grandfather’s name (Daaood) + her family name (Aslam). So formally we’d have “Zara bint Raziq ibn Daaood Aslam.” However, except for formal documents, the “ibn Daaood” and often the “bint Raziq” would be dropped. I’m told that the practice for Muslim women in the Middle East is to keep their own family name and do not change it to their husband’s. So, in America, she might simply be known as “Zara Aslam.” Sumeja, marrying Bahrudin in the United States followed the American custom and does use her husband’s last name. Kismetta is simply Kismetta Dhumzur from the American convention, though in the UAE she might be formally introduced as “Kismetta bint Bahrudin Dhumzur.”

One unexpected thing that happened during the creation of this comic was the death of Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Ruler (nominally since his stroke) of the UAE. The country is currently undergoing 40 days of mourning. I found this out after I completed the comic on 5/13/22. I had to re-edit dialogue on the last two pages to reflect this change.

It’s Iimi! Acta non Verba!

It’s one of those days. Paula is praying for the courts to approve her mother’s transfer. Kismetta is troubled with the direction that following truth is moving her, and Krysta is fighting with Daryl. What will they do when platitudes aren’t enough?

Preliminary Note: Acta non Verba is Latin for “Action, not words.”

[†] See: https://www.ifimightinterject.com/2020/07/its-iimi-dialogue-on-misconceptions.html

[‡] The Great Divorce p. 74

It’s Iimi! Divided Over “Joiners.”

Kismetta finds her friends praying for Paula and her mother… and for her with her upcoming move to Dubai. As she’s going to the Mosque for Arabic class anyway, Kismetta offers to pray for them while she’s there. But she discovers that members of the Mosque don’t all hold the same view she does about praying for those outside her religion.

Preliminary notes: To understand the title, the Muslim term (not the American slang) “Joiners” is the translation of the the Arabic mushrik and is used by Muslims to describe both polytheists and Christians because they deny the Trinity and believe that we “join” Jesus to God. (This view is found in the Quran, Surah 5.72) It’s important to remember that Islam is not a monolith, however. Not all of them take the view that Najiyah and the Assistant Imam take.

If the Arabic text looks off compared to the rest of the dialogue, that’s due to the quirks of Word and Clip Studio Paint. Word will accurately portray the script from right to left, but copy-paste and breaking a sentence into two lines can result in unintended errors. Clip Studio Paint will automatically convert the Arabic into Left to Right text. So, I had to create PNG files of the first four sentences of Lorem Ipsum. Font size and legibility will suffer as a result compared to the natural word balloons. Because I had to make manual line breaks before pasting it into Google Translate, I wouldn’t be surprised if that changed the translation of each line.

It’s Iimi! Jesus is God, Not “a god.”

Gym class shifts back to the pool. Kismetta sits it out because she’s excused due to Ramadan. While sidelined, she asks Iimi about the difference between saying Christians believe Jesus is God and saying that Christians think Jesus is “a” god. This sets off a round of discussions that leaves Kismetta pondering, and the Gym teacher suspicious that the girls are trying to avoid participating in class. 

Preliminarily note: Kismetta and Iimi have been discussing these topics since the comic began in 2020. This comic builds on past discussions and reflections that Kismetta has. It will help the reader to review the following comics:

It’s Iimi! Issue Zero Part II (The first two comics, introducing Kismetta and the first dialogue on Aut Deus Aut Malus Homo.)

It’s Iimi! Lesson One: Knowing That We Don’t Know

It’s Iimi! But Where Does That Leave You?

It’s Iimi! Conflicted

It’s Iimi! Paradigm Shift

It’s Iimi! Bus-Stop Battle

It’s Iimi! Coffee Clash

It’s Iimi! The Riddle 

It’s Iimi! Bear One Another’s Burdens

It’s Iimi! Ascetics’ Aesthetics 

It’s Iimi! A Day in the Life of the Iscra Family

It’s Iimi! Kismetta’s Story: A Muslim Ponders During Good Friday

It’s Iimi! Problematic Assumptions?

Iimi-tan is involved in a symposium discussing whether the opposition to same-sex “marriage” and transgenderism by the Catholic Church is motivated by bigotry or hatred. She shows the assumptions used to make that claim are fatally flawed.

This is part one of a series.

Part II can be found HERE.

Part III can be found HERE.

The symposium is a new format for the comics. Instead of two people debating, we have multiple people with different perspectives coming to the discussion.