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Greg Evans
May 10, 2019
Avengers Endgame spoilers alert: We're pretty sure that everyone on the planet has seen this film by now but we thought that we best put this here in case.
So now you've cried your eyes out and the overwhelming surges of adrenaline have left your body, it's time to reflect on a few things that the Marvel Cinematic Universe has taught us.
As you would have seen, Tony Stark made the ultimate sacrifice to defeat Thanos by snapping his fingers and dying due to the energy feedback emitted from the Infinity Gauntlet.
This was a fitting send-off for Iron Man, who kicked started the MCU way back in 2008 with his eponymous debut film, which in many ways got us to this point.
Now, we realise that you might not have the best recollection of a film from 11 years ago so allow us to take you on a brief trip down Marvel memory lane.
When visiting Afghanistan, Stark is attacked and captured by a terrorist syndicate known as the Ten Rings. While being held captive, he meets and befriends a fellow prisoner called Yinsen, who is a doctor.
Yinsen saves Stark's life early into their friendship by placing the now iconic electromagnetic implant into his chest and preventing the shards of shrapnel from reaching the hero's heart.
The two then begin to hatch a plan to escape their captors, which leads Stark to create his first Iron Man suit. Unfortunately, the escape doesn't quite go to plan and Yinsen is killed by the terrorists.
On the surface, this might have seemed like a character dying in order to serve the heroism of another, but as Twitter user and Marvel fanatic @malihaness points out, it was the heroic act of a Muslim man in 2008 that saved the man that would eventually save the entire planet in 2023.
She begins by quoting the Quran ("And whoever saves one, it is as if he had saved mankind entirely") and puts forward her point with a compelling and heartfelt Twitter thread.
Maliha's Twitter thread has since gone viral receiving more than 20,000 retweets at the time of writing and people are loving it.
Marvel, despite its success, is hardly the most progressive or diverse movie franchise ever, having only released movies led by a woman and black character in the last 12 months and doing the bare minimum for LGBT+ representation.
However, as this thread shows they were, in 2008, at least attempting to present Muslim's as anything other than terrorists and comedy characters, which is still a prevalent problem today.
In addition to this, Marvel suggested in 2018 that they do have intentions to introduce a Muslim superhero into the MCU in the near future.
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