Suleiman Bakhit

Suleiman Bakhit was a Jordanian entrepreneur who produced superhero comics in various media for Arab youth. He was described as "fighting to change how the West sees Arab youth — and how Arab youth see themselves — one superhero at a time."

Early life and education Bakhit was born in 1978, the son of Marouf al-Bakhit, who served twice as prime minister of Jordan. Bakhit said that, when he was a child, "I once had an art teacher who refunded my parents' money and advised me never to try again."

He was at the University of Minnesota when 9/11 occurred. As president of the university's international student union, he began an "awareness campaign" to combat Anti-Arab racism in the United States. The campaign received considerable media attention and shortly afterwards, Bakhit has said, "four college kids attacked me on my way home late one night. They started with racial slurs, then attacked me with beer bottles. I suffered many scars and injuries that led to surgeries." He decided, "Well, either I pack my bags and go home to Jordan, or I do something. And I decided the best way to fight racism is to start with the young. So I began talking to schoolchildren ages 6 and 7 about Middle Eastern culture and what happened to me on 9/11, spreading a very simple message: Not all Middle Easterners are terrorists, and Al Qaeda is like the KKK."

In January 2010, Bakhit founded Aranim Games. As of July 2011, his firms had sold 1.2 million copies of print comics. In 2011, Aranim Games launched "a FarmVille-style social game called Happy Oasis" which allows players to build a "garden in traditional Islamic style."

Other activities During the Libyan Civil War, Bakhit and another TED Fellow, Adrian Hong, created "sort of a channel between Libya and Jordan to try to help some of the injured civilians come to Jordanian hospitals." As a result, "over 15,000 injured civilians got treated in Jordanian hospitals."