Speak Up – Kōrerotia15 July 2015

IslamFemale Coming up next conversations on race relations and human rights with

Speak Up – Kōrerotia here on Plains FM.

Sally E ngā mana, E ngā reo, E ngā hau e whāTēnā koutou katoaNau mai ki tēnei hōtaka: “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia”. Join the New Zealand Human Rights Commission as it engages in conversations around race and diversity in our country. Tune in as our guests “Speak Up”, sharing their unique and powerful experiences and opinions... May you also be inspired to “Speak Up” when the moment is right.

Nau mai haere mai ki tēnei hōtaka: “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia”. My name is Sally Carlton and I am a human rights specialist with the Human Rights Commission in Christchurch. Today we are going to be talking about Islam and what is Islam. Not only in a broad sense but for the people we’ve got here in the studio. Today we have got with us Husaini Hafiz, Jumaya Jones and Chris Jones - no relation, I don’t think! - who are going to briefly introduce themselves.

HA My name is Husaini, I have been in NZ for the past eight years, I am Muslim. I work as a doctor, I am also… I want to be and I am active in the community, in that capacity I have served one term as the social secretary for Muslim Association of Canterbury and currently I’m on the board of trustees for Canterbury Muslim Community Trust. I must say right now that although I am in the board, I am here representing my own individual and I am not speaking on behalf of the board. And the other thing is also, I am a Muslim but I can’t say that I speak for all the Muslims. Whatever I say today is in my own personal capacity, I don’t claim to be a leader, a cleric, someone knowledgeable, this is my opinion and I hope it is well guiding.

Sally Thanks Husaini. You mentioned a couple of associations there, what do those associations do?

HA Well the Muslim Association of Canterbury is generally the de facto association representing Muslims here in Christchurch and Canterbury. They also run the only mosque we have in Christchurch which is in Deans Ave so essentially that’s their main function. Canterbury Muslim Community Trust – we established ourselves just last year and is following - existing for the past, for I think about four years before that - in a capacity of Canterbury Muslim Building Bridges Group. As you can hear that’s a mouthful so we’ve changed and that group started because Office of Ethnic Affairs wanted groups of us to be the people who are able to build bridges within the community within the Muslim community in Christchurch

and also from the Muslim community of Christchurch to the bigger Christchurch population as a whole.

Sally Great thanks. And Jumaya?

JJ Hi my name is Jumaya. I am originally from Singapore and I came to NZ in 1983. I have three grown up adult children and am a grandma of two grandkids. Since my arrival I have spent ten years overseas, my children grew up overseas and when we came back to Christchurch… we chose to come back to NZ, we chose Christchurch in 2005 and since then we have been here. When we first arrived there was not much things going so we set up an organisation called NAWAI Centre and unfortunately four years after that we had to be disband and then I formed another organisation called the Canterbury Muslim Women Association… Canterbury Muslim Women Network and we work mostly with children and women and we focus on education and learning for the children and women and I was also one of the women coordinators, Muslim Association of Canterbury for one term (two years) and right now I am focusing back on NAWAI Centre which we disbanded and we recently decided to put together because we wanted to focus on the youth in Christchurch.

Sally What sort of practical things do you do if you are talking about education of women and children?

JJ Basically learning, children learn to read and write and we learn about Islam and most of this happens at the mosque at Deans Avenue.

Sally Great thanks. And our final guest, Chris?

CJ Hi Sally, my name is Doctor Chris Jones. I am a senior lecturer in medieval history at the University of Canterbury. I predominantly research and work in areas of medieval western Europe but I also teach a course on Muslim and Islamic civilisation between 600 and 1650, in fact gave the first lecture in this years offering this morning. I also teach lectures on the Middle East and North Africa in the twentieth century and I have a particular interest in that area. I spent my childhood or much of my childhood living in the Middle East: I spent a few years growing up in Saudi Arabia, a few years growing up in the Gulf states, I have travelled in Jordan, in Oman, various other areas so I have a particular interest in that part of the world. It’s basically the area that informed my childhood, so I grew up with stories that have come out of Islamic tradition in a culture that is very much informed by Islam. I am not myself a Muslim, I am a Christian, but I think it has probably left a very clear mark on my view and my understanding of the world and given me a particularly unique view which is I think sometimes lacking in western countries and one of the reasons I am particularly happy to come along and talk to you today.

Sally Great and I thought we might kick off this discussion of Islam and what is it with the expression “Assalamu alaykum” as this is how Muslims greet each other. And I know, Husaini, you in particular would be keen to talk

about the meaning behind that expression.

HA There is nothing magical, mystical or religious in “Assalamu alaykum” at all, in terms of what the phrase says, the phrase is in direct translation from Arabic is “Peace be upon you” - and Chris, I think you must be aware of that? Really, so it is a greeting that is used, though is a current Islam greeting or a greeting which you would greet one another in Islam. And from my readings, I found that this greeting has been used a long time even before the time of the prophet Mohammad. It is seen as an Arabic greeting but at the same time now it is used as a general greeting which Muslims are recommended to be greeting each other with. On the other part we also find a quite interesting greeting where it sounds more cool than saying hello, imagine you are meeting me in the street and say “Peace be upon you” - it sounds like something from Star Wars!

CJ I hadn’t thought of it in quite those terms but… It’s also interesting you say that because I think particularly in the Middle East, from my experience at least in my childhood, it became a phrase that wasn’t simply restricted to the Muslim community, it was a phrase that would be used if you were a westerner, if you were just living in the society. I think my father used to use it all the time so it sort of became... It moves beyond just its religious context in that sense.

Sally And we’re talking today about Islam because it’s the month of Ramadan and this is a really important event in the Islamic calendar and I’d be really interested to hear a little bit more about Ramadan from your perspectives.

JJ For Muslims, Ramadan is one of the pillars of Islam. So is obligatory for every believing Muslim to fast, it’s like a marathon, a fasting marathon for one month. So everybody is doing their very best to do lots of prayers and do the things that have been stated for us to gain more rewards. So you see most times sometimes people don’t go to the mosque, but you find during Ramadan at night it is a full house and it is a time also for people to get together and forgive and get to see their friends that they don’t normally get to see in other times. We’re talking about in Christchurch. Most people are busy working so during this time they take the opportunity to come and break fast which we call iftar and then after that we have extra prayers during the later part of the night and a lot of people congregate to do that prayers. It’s also a special month because we believe that the Qur’an was first revealed during one of the last ten days of the month of Ramada and the Qur’an was revealed to our prophet by Angel Gabriel at one of those nights, so you find that people are trying to achieve, try to pray and ask for whatever they like during one of those nights and apparently, we believe that it is coincides with the night that it actually was revealed your supplication will be granted.

HA Maybe I will like to clarify but sometimes when I tell my non-Muslim colleagues or friends that we fast for a month and then they say, “Oh do you mean you don’t eat or drink for a whole month?” and I say, “Well, no, it’s not that difficult.” So the prohibitions from eating and drinking and also

other… like sexual relations and all that starts from sunrise to sunset. So currently we don’t eat or drink from about 6.30am until about 5.30pm or so, and then we break our fast. And because the sunrise or sunset as you can see depends on where you are in the world, sometimes it can be really longer and sometimes it is shorter. And the other thing also the time for Ramadan changes, the reason it changes is because a Muslim calendar is a lunar calendar, it is also twelve months but a lunar month is much shorter than a standard Gregorian calendar. And so because of that, the year sort of moves forward. So now we are fasting in the winter and probably in about 16 years time or so we will be fasting in the middle of summer, which will be a challenge to say the least.

Sally Yes much longer days for sure.

JJ We actually fast from dawn to dusk, not sunrise to sunset, there is really difference.

Sally And are there any exceptions to who should be following this?

JJ Yes.. So every able Muslim fasts from dawn to dusk except those who are sick and mentally disabled, children, they are exempt from fasting.

CJ Am I right, I recall this - but sometimes I recall things vaguely so please correct me if I’m wrong - if one is travelling there are exceptions as well?

JJ Yes thank you, for travel is also, but nowadays you find that travelling is so simple.

CJ Absolutely. I think the original restrictions were designed if you were travelling with goods and it would have been very challenging travelling through the desert without…

HA Well the other thing is, although it sounds like a month of no eat and no drink and a month of suffering… I would like to dispel that thought, it actually is quite a joyous month for us. We don’t find it particularly difficult after you overcome that mental barrier of no eating or drinking. It is really a month where we reconnect with each other quite a lot. Children look forward to the breaking of fast time and I’m not sure whether that’s your experience in Saudi Arabia.

CJ I was going to say actually it is actually rather… I wouldn’t have termed it an enjoyable period; it’s slightly difficult to get used to at first. I would also say I probably would have a slightly different experience between it in Saudi Arabia and in the Gulf states. But in the Gulf states I always used to associate Ramadan with actually a rather good time. There was a degree of inconvenience in that you know, you’d be a school child and you’d have to remember not to eat in public - and this is true in many Arab countries: even if you are non-Muslim, you still observe as courtesy not eating in public, and there are fines and penalties sometimes in some countries if you break that. But generally you are looking forward to eating because

it’s like having Christmas effectively. And of course also in the evenings, this is when you are invited into people’s company and this is very pleasurable and it’s almost like a month of festivity in some ways. So I remember Ramadan - despite the inconvenience during daylight hours of having to go to school in some very hot months and not being able to eat and drink - but I remember the evenings as being very positive ones and having a lot of friends and a lot of camaraderie. So I tend to have happy memories of Ramadan from childhood.

Sally Now I’d like to just come back to Eid later because I’d really like to hear about the celebratory side of it at the end of it as well, but we’re just going to take a quick break and listen to some music. And Husaini, you’ve chosen a song for us?

HA Yes I’ve chosen a song by Dawud Wharnsby. He’s a Canadian born singer. He sings predominantly Islamic songs but not in a… I wouldn’t say commercial but in a very popular tune and I listen to it quite a lot. He’s got a good voice obviously and his lyrics are really quite profound. Have a listen and tell me what you think, but I think his lyrics are quite profound. Try and listen to the message behind it, he’s available on You Tube with the lyrics and all that there.

MUSIC BY DAWUD WHARNSBY

Sally Welcome back to Speak Up - Kōrerotia, here on Plains FM 96.9. We’re speaking about Islam and here in the studio we’ve got Husaini, Jumaya and Chris. We were talking about Eid and Ramadan and I’d be interested to talk a little bit more about Eid, which is the celebration at the end of Ramadan, and also speak more widely about the pillars of Islam. Jumaya, you mentioned Ramadan is one of the five pillars, what are the other pillars?

JJ The first pillar is to….

HA Profess.

JJ Profess, thank you, to profess that there is no God but one God which is Allah and the Prophet Mohammad is the last prophet. And the second pillar is five times a day prayers on specific times of the day, day and night. The third one is Ramadan; the fourth one is Zakah which is charity, whereupon every person who has a certain amount of money, up to that threshold, you have to give away 2.5%.

HA It is test on your disposable income.

JJ That’s right. And then the last pillar is to go to Hajj if you can afford. So that’s not compulsory, the others are compulsory but not that one.

Sally Could you explain more about the Hajj? It’s something that when I think about Islam I find particularly exciting is the idea of going to the Hajj.

JJ I went to Hajj in 2003 and before that I went to the Umrah which is the lesser pilgrimage where you just stay in one place. But where with the Hajj is different because you have to go to specific places at specific times and that’s about ten days. Let Husaini continue because he has gone there too.

CJ I was going to say it’s probably just worth saying that the Hajj is directed to Mecca; that you are going to Mecca. When one looks as this, this is a part of a traditional pilgrimage that one finds in several religions but one doesn’t find it developed in quite the way one days in Islam and this is something that becomes… Historians look at this and suggest that the Hajj is the… it’s the fifth pillar, it’s something that doesn’t develop at exactly the time of the Prophet but comes slightly afterwards but is very much rooted in the actions of the Prophet and the relationship and his life and his deeds. But it’s also something - we tend to see images on the media today of millions of people going on the Hajj - but actually this is something not at all modern, this is something that has been in existence for 1400 years. I look at the Middle Ages and see hundreds of thousands of people travelling on the Hajj pilgrimage in a ritual that hasn’t really changed in nearly 1400 years, it is quite striking.

JJ So the circumvallation of people going around, that happened even before Prophet Mohammed became a prophet, that was already going on and we believe that the Black Stone was actually built, rebuilt actually by Abraham and his son Ishmael and close by to the Black Stone….

HA When Jumaya mentions Black Stone is if you look at pictures, there is a black cube…

JJ A square box

CJ Kaaba.

JJ Kaaba yes.

Sally It’s good to clarify all these things.

JJ I always assume people know but actually they don’t. And just close by that there is a little glass shrine and there is the footprints of supposedly Prophet Abraham.

HA Which is Abraham and sort of….

CJ And this one of the points in visits on a Hajj pilgrimage - you will both know more about this than I do - but there’s a particular point I believe in the pilgrimage where one puts on a seamless white garment and then one proceeds….it isn’t simply the procession around the Kaaba that we see on television, but there are a series of set points where one goes. One stones the devil at one point I believe, at least that’s the medieval practice.

JJ The running back and forth.

HA It is still happening now. The Hajj is now basically… All of us will do Mecca. so you can imagine the whole population of NZ descending within Christchurch and all wanting to do the same thing, not necessarily at the same time, all needing to do the same thing. So that’s what happens. And along with that, it’s not just descending and just doing your own thing, there’s specific rights and rituals which we do and this is prescribed with what Prophet Mohammad did when he first did the pilgrimage which is a prescribed pilgrimage. So he is saying he is doing this and saying this is how you should be doing from henceforth. That came in a later part of his life as prophet, not in the early years, so that came later, and he says this is the prescribed way to do it. So you are right, Chris. So when we do the Hajj, there is a day or half a day which we have to spend in this place called Arafat. And when we start that particular… we wear the seamless clothes symbolising simpleness, symbolising that we really do not have anything or we will not have anything with us when we go back to the ________, that is the symbolism to it. So the desert plain of Arafat, we stay there for a day and then we go onto another plain called Muzdalifah where we stay there for overnight. And that plain - if you think Christchurch is too small for four million people, you imagine Arthur’s Pass and four million people being there! So one night, everybody has to be there so you are literally standing next to each other, sitting next to each other for the whole night. And then after that you move on back to Mecca and do some rites and rituals and then once you have finished your rituals that’s when you do not have to be in those garments anymore.

Sally You are talking about all these people and it’s very evocative, you know Arthurs Pass comparisons! When you are with all these other people, they’ve obviously come from all around the world but what you share is your faith. I guess that’s sort of as much as a part of the pilgrimage, the physical place is as much a part as the people maybe? Is that so?

JJ The interesting part is you have people… It is so diverse, and they all connect by saying “Assalamu alaykum”, they know that even if they can’t say anything else and everybody connects just with that saying which is coming from the first point we were talking about.

HA You are right. When we are there, all our who we are and where we come from, it all melts and a lot of the time we do connect. So I really enjoy sitting next to someone and starting making conversation. And so when I was there at the main mosque I spoke to this man and he was from China and it was a fascinating… I don’t speak his language, he doesn’t speak mine, but somehow we communicated and it is beautiful because in the end he decided he wanted to give me something, all he gave me was a very small can of medicated oil. So he gave that as a present to me and I found that really quite magical that he felt he needed to give something to me. And another time I sat next to another man who looks African to me. So I said, ‘What do you do?” and he’s actually a CEO from running some

hotel chain in Dubai, so obviously well off, but at the mosque all of us are the same so it’s really amazing.

CJ It’s also a particularly good deed to help someone complete the Hajj as well - you will know more about this than I do - but I think it’s regarded as particularly beneficial if you are able to help someone complete their pilgrimage as well and one encounters cases of this. One used to encounter more cases of this in the medieval world where people would enable others to complete the Hajj, but I think you still encounter cases of this today where people support people complete the Hajj and there’s a tremendous community of feeling to it.

HA Actually in the medieval days going to the Hajj is something which you are expected possibly not to come back from. So the farewell you are given by your town or family is almost the last time we will see you.

CJ This is very true. There is a wonderful in western terms, fourteenth century traveller called Ibn Battuta, and he sets out on the Hajj from North Africa and his aim is to go to Mecca and he doesn’t return home for over 20 years - and people would not necessarily have expected him to ever return home. But he is something of an adventurer and he ends up going to China at one point so he’s a quite fascinating traveller, probably one of the most travelled people of the Middle Ages. But it’s easy to forget when one reads his travel accounts and reads of his adventures in India and China but the reason why he was travelling initially was for the Hajj, this was his purpose. I would actually say people should read Ibn Battuta incidentally, it’s a very entertaining account.

JJ There’s a documentary.

CJ Really.

HA It’s not as good as what you would read in historical books but…

Sally As well as the five pillars of Islam there’s also the six articles of faith, if we could maybe have a little brief discussion about this.

JJ When we talk about pillars of Islam and pillars of faith you find that the pillars of Islam is normally something that you have to do and action, whereas with the faith it is all inside, nobody knows whether you… you can proclaim it but nobody knows whether you really believe in it. So the first one is to really believe there’s only one God and the second is to believe in the angels. We believe that angels are made from the light not from fire, from light and then believe in…

HA The books of God.

JJ The Revelations. The fourth one is…

HA The Prophets that were sent to us as messengers to warn us and the next

one is the Day of Judgement and the last one is fate and predestination, so we believe that everything that happened has already been predestined and it’s all written down before it’s actually happened. So this is something that all Muslims believe that.

Sally That’s a great way of describing or defining: the internal versus the external. It makes it much clearer for me.

JJ So in Islam there is not just believing but you have to do the action too; not just doing the action and not believing. So it has to come hand in hand.

HA I would like to add there that the five pillars of Islam and the six articles of faith is actually possibly the only thing that is common from one Muslim to another, apart from that… well I’m not saying there should… There’s no other common denominator. But when someone says they are a Muslim, these are the two things which you can take as a given.Apart from that, any other preconceptions that one may have like oh he’s a Muslim, so hence he has to have a beard or he has to wear certain things, all that - you can really literally throw out the door.

Sally Thank you that’s really good to know. Actually one of my questions is around Sunni and Shi’a Islam, and if there are any main differences between them?

CJ That’s a difficult question to answer. I can answer it from a historian’s perspective, but you both may have different views as well. I mean from an historian’s perspective the Sunni/Shi’a distinction is effectively to do with a succession dispute. We would look at this from a historian’s perspective and say there are Sunni Muslims - Sunni means tradition - they are Muslims who follow what we think as the normal Arab succession process in that when the Prophet Mohammad (peace be upon him) dies, there is a decision to choose a leader for the community, for the ummah, and the decision made by the community is to choose Abu Bakr who had been the Prophet’s friend. And generally Muslims who follow the idea of Abu Bakr, and then what we call the rightly guided caliphs, through a series of rightly guided caliphs - they would be Sunni Muslims. That’s about 90% of the Muslim population of the world today. Shi’a Muslims have a slightly different perspective. Shi’a basically means the party of Ali. And Ali was the Prophet’s cousin. He’s also, to make things mildly confusing, the fourth of the rightly guided caliphs. But Shi’a Muslims would argue that actually because of his blood relationship to the Prophet and because he married Fatima the Prophet’s daughter, that actually Ali should have succeeded to the leadership of the community initially and that Ali’s descendants should have been the leaders of the community and not a group that they would regard as… there’s a rather derogatory term for them which basically means ‘kings’ who Sunni Muslims would regard as actually the leaders of the community. So there is this split at this very, very early stage - within 30 years of the death of the Prophet - and a historian looks at this and says this is a political dispute, this is a succession dispute. But there are also other ways of

looking at it, and they would be do with the reasons why Ali was more suited to be the leader of the community. But I will let you both talk about those if you wish to, but the historian’s view is it is political.

JJ I believe even Ali himself did not want to be the leader and they have a lot of regards and respect for the elder. But actually the science for Abu Bakr to be the next caliph was quite clear for a lot of Muslims, because when the Prophet was very sick he asked for him to lead the prayers and Abu Bakr kept on refusing, but then he was asked to and that was a sign that he was the next caliph.

HA Well I agree with both here. One thing I want to highlight now is as compared to successions for thrones or power etc, all the caliphs actually do not really want to be next leader. Like, for example, all bar one of the caliphs, I think the second one or the third one….

JJ Second.

HA But when he was, Abu Bakr passed away and he said you have to be the next caliph and he actually literally didn’t want to do the job and his logic is really very good, his logic was that as a caliph I am responsible, he takes it even to mean that if a goat falls off the side of a cliff, am I responsible? So that is the weight which he feels the leader should be holding. Hence if you measure that weight on your shoulders, very few people will really want to do that. So the succession thing however is a real thing so is the people around that feel, well you should be in power, and another group will say, well no you should be in power. So the animosity didn’t come I think from the caliphs themselves, it was more the general population around.So because of the groups… If you can imagine groups start to form - and again, at that time it wasn’t Shia or Sunni defined as yet. But I think the definition probably started when the Prophet’s grandson Hussain was killed in a battle and where the Shi’a believed that he should be the leader then but the more - I won’t say ‘popular’ - but the more the leaders at that time say no, the community have decided that someone else should be the leader. So the death of Hussain is seen as a very significant time and significant event for the Shi’a community.

CJ I think possibly one thing just worth clarifying is this term “caliph” which we’ve all used, but it means ‘deputy of the Prophet’. It’s not necessarily something people would be familiar with.

Sally Thank you very much. We’re just going to have another song and we’ve been speaking about it and we’ve gone with Yusuf Islam - as you might all know more familiarly as Cat Stevens.

MUSIC BY YUSUF ISLAMSally Nau mai haere mai ki tēnei hōtaka: “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia”, the Human

Rights Commission radio show on Plains FM 96.6. We’re in the studio with Husaini, Jumaya and Chris speaking about Islam

and I’d like to turn the topic more to thinking about Islam in NZ and in Christchurch specifically. Now, have you got any idea of the number of Muslims who live in Christchurch? I think in the paper it said about 3000.

JJ Yes according to the Census, at least 3000.

Sally And those are Sunni Muslims?

JJ I think it is combined.

Sally OK, because I know there is a small Shi’a mosque that also doubles as the Afghani community centre.

HA Yes there is.

Sally So I’m just keen to get a bit of a sense of you guys as Muslims, and Chris as someone who is teaching about Islam, how do you feel in NZ?

JJ I think for me so far I have not encountered any problems or discrimination or anything, probably because I am too old! But I know that my daughter when she first came here to Christchurch, she was at the Canterbury University and she was wearing the hijab, head cover and a long dress and somebody who was not a young person, quite an adult… well in his 40s, very executive looking, came to her and said, “Go back to your country”.

CJ That’s appalling, that is absolutely appalling.

JJ Yes but she said, “But I am born here” and he says, “Well, dress like a Kiwi then” and she’s thinking, “Ohhhh”. And knowing her, she would like to have a discourse with him but unfortunately he just walked away. And for most of us, if somebody sees us being different I would just love for that person to approach us and ask us question and we are quite happy to have a little discussion because that is the only way you will understand somebody. You can’t just look at the cover and think that is what it is.

Sally And based on that story, I feel that your poor daughter - I mean her identity, she must feel like a Kiwi.

JJ But only her dressing is different. But I think recently because of the media and what’s happening outside NZ, I think there are students who come from Saudi Arabia - those who are more different, they don’t just wear the head cover, they actually cover their face - and they’re getting a bit of a hard time. Because I know there was one, this was quite a while ago and she was in Dunedin, she was a student in Dunedin and somebody actually verbally attacked her. And it was interesting because I put that article in my Canterbury Muslim Network, I had a page and the person actually wrote to us and started berating us again. So it is just unfortunate because my other partner, she was the one, she’s a convert and she wrote to her nicely and explained to her. So I hope she learned a bit more.

Sally You are right, education is so critical, isn’t it?

JJ Yes it is and that’s why I keep telling all the ladies: Be prepared to talk if somebody wants to talk to you. I think for men it is easy, like, nobody would know that he is Muslim, it’s just like another ordinary guy in the city. But for a lot of women, Muslims who choose to wear a head cover or more in a more dedicated part, people who cover their face, I think they do encounter that sort of problems. But I really appreciate… one thing I really appreciate - I think people in Australia get a worse time than in NZ - overall the people who are abusive are just a small number.

HA I think putting it in perspective, I must say it doesn’t happen all the time, that happens sometimes and I think if you look at it…I always tell myself, “OK, what if I am sitting on the other side, what if I am a non-Muslim, I am a NZer who was born in NZ, lived here for a long time and then you see a Muslim for the first time.” Then the only thing the person has to base on is, one, what he reads in the papers, probably very little past experience and maybe some word of mouth, right? So this way I think sometimes misconceptions come about and certain preconceived ideas that individual has - and I must say that that group of individuals in my experience is quite small, is not large - but I think it is our responsibility as Muslims to somehow reach out and say, “Hey guys, this is who we are”. And the reason I say they are small is I’ve done practice as a doctor down in Timaru, it’s a small town, possibly very, very few Muslims if any there, but the reception I had has been good and nobody really… some knew and some didn’t know I was Muslim. But nobody really felt that I was a threat, that they should be uncomfortable with me. And I found it really quite easy, most of them if not all of the time, to be here in NZ.

JJ I think for us being women we are just like a walking billboard is the only big difference. We are walking around with the… I mean, you look and you think, “Oh, she’s a Muslim.”

Sally Yes, it’s very visual and very obvious.

CJ Sometimes I think it’s just a reflection of the state of religious and cultural education in NZ. I remember having a student a few years ago in my Muslim World course who simply came up to me and thanked me afterwards and said that before the lecture she had simply thought that Islam was something to do with people who lived in deserts and she had no sense. And I teach it very much as a civic-based religion, I always think Islam, particularly in the Middle Ages, is a religion about cities and science and civilisation. And this is something simply the student hadn’t encountered.

Sally Something else I’m wondering about in how NZ approaches religion, is whether workplaces in particular take account of different religions and the different… What would be the word?

HA Needs?

Sally Different needs, yes, but also the different obligations that come with being part of a particular faith. So I’m wondering, for example, if Muslims are supposed to pray five times a day for example, do workplaces set aside a prayer room or do they allow you to take time off for religious festivals and that sort of thing.

HA So we pray five times a day - but mind you, the prayers which we have is not elaborate and complex - so a lot of times when I do pray I’m at work and very few of my colleagues actually know that I do this. It’s not that I’m being subvert about it in any way, but it’s not something that I would wave around say, “This is what I am doing guys, look at me.” Just before we started this interview today, because of the time, we had to do a prayer; if not we are going to miss it. So we performed the prayer just outside in the waiting room there, just five minutes. I think very few people knew that we were doing it.But having said that, if there was an obligation there, my experience so far with my work colleagues and my bosses hasn’t been an issue and they would understand. However, this doesn’t transcend to all employers, I do understand from speaking to the community that there are some barriers in some workplaces and again that depends on your employer. If the employer feels that, no, this is not what I want to give you, therein comes a problem there. Where someone needs something and the employer says no - and Muslims here being a minority sometimes feel very frightened to speak up, a lot of them are really worried that… (a) How is that going to impact on the views of my religion? (b) How is that going to impact on my employment and I really need this employment right now because if I lose this employment I lose my visa or whatever. And that’s it ,so there’s a real problem in some workplaces.

JJ My personal experience when I was taking education at Canterbury, when it’s time to pray and I’m at the library I just pray in-between the books. And there were times when somebody passed by and say, “Are you OK?” And I’m just standing there and he say, “Are you OK?” And when I was doing my teaching practice at the schools, primary schools, normally I just approached the teachers and normally they will ask you to fill in a form saying what do you need and stuff, and one of the things I always tell them, I do not shake hands with the opposite sex so that... Do we understand, it is nothing personal, it is just how I like to practice my faith and men and women don’t actually touch each other. And so that is how I like it and so I don’t shake hands with the opposite sex. So one other thing I also asked them is like during normally the prayer times is during the break time, the lunch time and so I just ask permission can I pray in the room or is there a specific room and normally I do not have a problem.

Sally That’s really good to hear actually. There’s just one final topic in the last few minutes remaining that I’d quite like to touch on briefly. There’s obviously a lot going on in the world, and Jumaya you have touched on it,

well beyond the boundaries of NZ, well beyond Christchurch - but is that having any impact that you can discern here in Christchurch?

JJ When I was the woman coordinator at the mosque there were things happening, especially with newspapers showing radicalisation and showing the mosque - it has got nothing to do with the picture of the mosque but people seem to put the mosque in there - so that was a bit of a problem. But this, beyond people getting radicalised is… I’ll just give you a story, this is something I know personally. A 16 year old boy who became Muslim recently, the mother is worried that he is being radicalised and how and who teaches him? The internet.

HA And I think the reality of the world today is that Islam is viewed in a negative way by the media and a lot of negative publicity, Islam is getting basically negative publicity and especially I have to mention, I really dislike to mention this with things like ISIS and things like this happening with terrorism etc, people tend to connotate “Well, this is Islam” but that is where I really want to say… and my initial point there is no common denominator there, I can safely and almost assuredly say that Muslims here in Canterbury, we are just like any other Cantabrians, we have children, we have family, we are in the neighbourhoods and just as much as you want a safe neighbourhood, we want a safe neighbourhood, we don’t want to see anything negative happening because violence shows no selectivity, you know once you start violence then nobody is not affected. So that is not what we are here for, we are here to just be New Zealanders, want to practice our faith which we think has absolutely no problems for us practicing our faith and being NZers and contributing to the NZ community as a whole, that’s what we want to do.

CJ If I may also put this in a historical context as well? If we look at this in the long view, Islam of course has always been a tremendously tolerant religion, far more tolerant from its earliest days than many forms of Christianity. And I always find this very striking when I look at the medieval world and I look at Islamic cities and you see Islamic cities in which there are Christians, there are Jews, they are not necessarily in the medieval world of the same social status as Muslims living in those cities but there is a tremendous toleration. And this is not at all what we find in the western Christian world, particularly with things like the Crusades. But also when we look at this as well we find historically there are always small sects in any religion and there are in Islam as well, groups like the Assassins who are extreme, who have unusual interpretations of concepts like Jihad. I think the difference that we see in today’s world is the media and the way in which the media approaches these things and I think the way in which the media scares people in the western world in particular. And I think I’ve seen in the last 20 years Islam in particular become the bogeyman held up to scare western civilisation and I think this is quite disturbing actually. I think better education in the western world is one of the key things and we need to realise the groups like ISIS are actually unusual and that they have very peculiar views compared to the great majority of Muslims,

whether they’re Shi’a or Sunni, and I think this is something very significant that we have to understand. It has nothing to do with the great majority of Muslims in the world.

Sally I think that might be about time for us today unfortunately. Kua pau te wā mō tēnei rā - We’re out of time for today. Thank you so much to Husaini, Jumaya and Chris for coming in and for such a rich and I think very informative discussion.And I would like to also say tune in again next month. In August we’re going to be talking about indigenous peoples in celebration of the International Day of the Worlds Indigenous People.