“You’re scaring me, hovering over me like that,” said the stranger sitting at one end of the bench. I had a foot propped on the other end to stretch my hamstring. He and I had just finished a local fundraising 5K with a “Heroes and Villains” theme.

I had chosen to run as Dust, a face-veil-and-abaya-wearing X-Men character who happens to be Muslim. I told him this and pointed out, “I’m a hero, not a villain.”

“I feel a little better,” he said, acknowledging his familiarity with the reference. Then, a minute later, apparently after replaying Dust’s story line back in his head, he added, “But you’re conflicted?”

My reply: “What mutant isn’t?”

Dust (real name Sooraya Qadir) is a fictional X-Men character. (Marvel Comics)

On the surface, my fellow runner and I were dissecting the psychology of a fictional character dreamed up by Marvel Comics. But in reality, like Dust, I was conflicted. As a Muslim woman who doesn’t ordinarily cover my hair, let alone my face, I’ve had members of my religion tell me I’m misguided, or sinning, or heading straight to hell for the way I dress or, alternatively, for believing it’s OK to dress the way I do. It would be better to believe I was obligated to wear a head-covering but not wear it, some say, than to wear it but believe it was not obligatory.

I try not to dwell on veiling in my thinking, writing or teaching about Islam. Dust, of course, brings the veil front and center. She may be a rare positive representation of a Muslim woman in comic books, but her character is affected by Orientalism and sexism. Does she break down stereotypes, or does she reinforce them?

It’s a legitimate question, and had the race been held two weeks earlier, I might have worn a different costume. But in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, conflicting Muslim identities have been much in the news — and much on my mind as well. The fact that the bombing suspects were long-time Massachusetts residents, locally educated and English-speaking, has raised questions about conflicting loyalties.