(RNS) Shepard Fairey was a thriving underground artist when his iconic “Hope” image of President Obama catapulted him into the national spotlight last year.

His first solo exhibit, at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art, shattered museum attendance records, and has since moved to Pittsburgh’s Andy Warhol Museum, before heading to Cincinnati’s Lois and Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art next February.

Among the images are several featuring Muslim women. Usually portrayed as victims of Taliban or Saudi misogyny, the Muslim women in Fairey’s portraits — veiled, unveiled, peering through curtains with fear, posing with flower-tipped AK-47’s — belie simplification. They’re sometimes strong, other times vulnerable.

Fairey, 39, grew up in a Presbyterian home in South Carolina. He knows a few Muslims, including his family’s housekeeper, but says his interest in Muslim women has less to do with his personal contacts and more with a desire to protest the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and to “humanize” Muslims. Some answers have been edited for length and clarity.

Q: What sparked your interest in Muslim women?

A: Women make strong symbols of peace. I choose to use Arab women as symbols of peace and humanity because people might be able to relate to (them) emotionally, and that might lead them to reconsidering their position intellectually. Most people around the world, no matter what their religion or culture is, want to live peacefully; there is a minority of people, whether they’re the town hall disrupters or the suicide bombers, who want to create problems. I don’t think the nature of Islam is the issue.

Q: What are you trying to convey in these images?

A: In some images, I’m acknowledging not only that things are complicated, but I’m setting up a dynamic that will lead one person to come to one conclusion and another person to come to a different one.

There’s the image of the woman with the AK-47, but the AK-47 has a flower in it. One person might see that as a symbol that we want peace, not war. Another might say that’s a terrorist and you can’t camouflage a terrorist with a flower. There’s also the idea that people are in a situation that is so complicated that we can’t unravel it so easily.

Q: Do you know any Muslims personally?

A: (Some), but that doesn’t really have anything to do with my interest in these Middle Eastern, Muslim images. There are a lot of different interpretations of the Quran, and I think it’s very unfair for the most extreme interpretations of Islam to be the only picture that the Western world is getting.

Q: The image of President Obama put your career into overdrive. How do you feel about his outreach to the Muslim world?

A: Obama’s speech on how to engage the Arab world had the right ideas. Diplomacy is always the way to go, and I hope Obama chooses that route as much as possible. He’s right about showing respect towards sovereign nations and not dealing with them as if the United States is superior. The Muslim world has the perception that the United States doesn’t respect them, and they probably deserve to have that perspective, and we need to rectify that.

Q: Have you gotten any feedback about these images?

A: Some people have said, “Why are you putting terrorists in your work?” which obviously is the ignoramus transitive property of equality — a Muslim did something that could be considered terrorism, so all Muslims are terrorists. That logic is so convoluted, but I think a lot of Americans have that logic. Not all, but a lot. I’ve also gotten comments from people in Lebanon and Israel, who have responded very positively. Having a constructive conversation about it is a good thing, and if it’s inspiring that in some people, that’s very healthy.

Q: Tell me a bit about religion in your own life.

A: I was raised Christian. I’m not religious now. My parents always emphasized that you treat other people how you want to be treated. There was never going to be one right way on how to think about religion.

So my perspective on religion has been, if it’s good for someone, if it provides a moral and ethical framework for them that’s beneficial to them, that’s great. But once people start trying to impose what they think is the right way to worship on others, then it becomes a problem.