Kiwi Muslims under siege

Auckland Muslims tell SIMON COLLINS what it's like to be caught in the crossfire as the hunt for the perpetrators of the US terror attacks continues.

Mt Roskill lawyer Abdul Hafeez Rasheed did not hear a police officer compare him to the Saudi terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. But when he was told what had been said, he was angry.

Rasheed, whose long white beard matches the colour of his Muslim robes and turban, chairs the Shura Council, the highest body of New Zealand's Muslim community.

A few days ago, after the terrorist attacks in the United States that have been blamed on bin Laden, Rasheed was driving his 3-year-old son, Abid, to kindergarten in Auckland's New North Rd when all cars on the road were stopped by a police roadblock.

"I had someone with me in the front passenger's seat and he heard one of them say, 'There's a bin Laden.' My friend told me after we had driven past," he says.

"When we came back I made sure we went the same way so I could speak to the policeman who spoke like that. I asked my friend to point out the officer to me."

But, ironically, the friend had only just arrived from Fiji and said, "They all look the same." So Rasheed could do nothing about the comment.

Hypersensitive? Perhaps, but the incident reveals how vulnerable Muslims feel right now throughout the Western world.

They feel that even by asking them about terrorism, the media are blaming them for something that has nothing to do with them. As one Muslim New Zealander puts it: "When the IRA bombs London, you don't ask a Kiwi Catholic what he thinks of the IRA."

Nevertheless, our Muslim neighbours are feeling under siege. Near Rasheed's home in Mt Roskill, a Somali woman who was covering her face with a veil when she went out was hit twice on the street last month with a tennis racquet.

In central Auckland, another veiled Somali woman on her way to an English class at the Auckland University of Technology had to be taken to hospital for x-rays after a man hit her in the face shouting, "You are a terrorist".

Another Somali AUT student who was harassed on work experience because of her Muslim dress was moved twice to a different position in the workplace, but when the harassment continued the company told her she would have to leave unless she changed the way she dressed.

An Egyptian woman driving on the motorway was almost forced off the road when a group of teenagers drove their car into the side of her car. Another motorist driving past the Muslim Al-Madinah School in Mangere shouted "killers" at the children.

A group of youths threw stones and abuse at a 14-year-old girl walking to the neighbouring Zayed College for Girls.

"There were people around who came out and sort of shooed them away," says Zayed principal Robina Dean. "But from that day, we made sure someone picked her up from home."

Ponsonby Imam (priest) Sheikh Mohammed Abdul Rahman Ayrut says Afghanistan will be right to fight America if the US attacks it without proving the country was responsible for the September 11 terrorist attacks.

But if bin Laden did order the attacks, and if the Taleban shelter him, then "this means you bring the problem by your hand; you can't say this is holy war. If they are really involved, it's not a holy war".

Abdul Hafeez Rasheed goes back one further step, suggesting that the New York attack was caused by America's own actions.

"They are just going around witchhunting Muslims. The perpetrator has become the accuser," he says.

"Of course I think there is no justification for terrorism. We all agree with that.

"But ... some other commentators say it's about time that they [Americans] addressed the grievances of the Muslims, and they have largely to do with what's happening in Iraq and in Palestine."

Iraq's Saddam Hussein was "a creation of America". The US backed him in his war with Islamic Iran, then turned on him when he threatened US oil interests in Kuwait. Hundreds of thousands have died since US-backed sanctions were imposed on Iraq after the Kuwait invasion.

In Palestine, "Palestinians are being killed by American bullets supplied to the Israelis".

"Violence is glorified. Who glorifies it?" asks Rasheed. "Hollywood. America."

Muslims in New Zealand have always been a close-knit minority. In the 1945 census, only 59 men and eight women, mostly from India, gave their religion as Muslim. Even by 1982, when the Ponsonby mosque opened after decades of hard work, Auckland Muslims numbered only 800.

Because of their small numbers, Muslims of all nations worship together here: Fiji Indians (the biggest group), Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Iranians, Iraqis, Afghans, Arabs, Turks, Somalis, Indonesians, Malaysians, Filipinos, Bosnians, Kosovars and New Zealand converts.

"The range of nationalities performing Salat [prayers] at the [Ponsonby] mosque has few rivals in the Western world," wrote Abdullah Drury in a recent issue of the journal Al-Nahdah.

Since the first Fiji coup in 1987 and the unrest in much of the rest of the Muslim world, Auckland has seen an influx of Islamic refugees and migrants. In recent years seven new mosques have opened in the region, at least two of them in former churches. The New Zealand Muslim Association estimates that 12,000 to 14,000 of New Zealand's 20,000 to 22,000 Muslims live in Auckland.

For many who have simply treated their religion as part of who they are, the current crisis is forcing them to commit to Islam more consciously than before.

"When the [New York] incident happened, I thought, 'Oh no, I'm going to have to deny where I come from'," says a Muslim Afghan second-year science student at Auckland University.

"But then I thought, 'Why should I have to?' Everyone should be proud of where they are from. We are a small community, but even though they are different cultures, it doesn't matter whether you are Fijian or Somali or whatever, we are all helping one another. We look on each other as brothers and sisters and we are brought up to support one another."

Although her mother covers her hair with a scarf as Islam requires, the student wears her own scarf around her neck, allowing her hair to flow freely.

"The hijad [veil] is Arab," she says. "It just depends. From an Afghan point of view, there are Afghans who are westernised and some Afghans here wear scarves, it's just their choice."

Amazingly to most New Zealanders of her age, she accepts Islam's ban on alcohol.

"I'm not allowed to go out, but the restrictions that I have, I don't resent, because it's part of my religion.

"Why should I resent things when I know how bad it [alcohol] is? I'm glad I have restrictions because it keeps you in line with your religion. I think my religion is my life, really."

Schoolteacher Nasreen Hannif, who covers her hair with a scarf, says the scarf provides a sense of "more freedom than you could imagine".

"I work, I go out," she says. "Maybe there are certain places where I don't go. I don't go, for example, to bars, because alcohol is against Islam. Also we believe in serving the community, we go out of our way to help people in the community.

"The scarfing of hair is a spiritual thing, whenever you are spiritually ready for it. If you have faith, it just comes automatically. Nobody forces it on you."

Robina Dean, a New Zealander who converted to Islam 23 years ago, says she was attracted by its "simple faith" where "everything you do is part of worshipping God".

"It's the social fabric as well. It's a brotherhood where all Muslims are your brothers and sisters. It's like entering a big family," she says.

"It's a very clean, very good way of life and very close to God. It takes into account your spiritual dimension and puts it as part of your everyday life. That is the thing that I have found has supported me, which nothing else did before."

Dean wears a full veil when she goes out and feels "respectable and dignified".

"In Islam, your outward appearance is nothing, it's what's inside that's important. It's what's inside your family, what's in your heart."

Another New Zealand convert, accountant Madinah Watkin, says Islam overcomes the self-centred Western idea that we are all responsible for ourselves.

"Islam teaches you that Allah [God] is the ultimate; responsibility is from Allah," she says. "If we do our very best and still have difficulties, that is from Allah and that is what our life is. So it took this enormous sense of self-responsibility away.

"As a Muslim, whatever we do is part of our religion, whether we are eating, cooking, working, driving, looking after each other. In all aspects of life we take into consideration is this the best that our religion is telling us, or are we following what Allah expects us to do?"

Watkin worked for two years in Kuwait and was shocked when she came back to New Zealand and heard how much people run each other down and make jokes about their mothers-in-law and the like.

"The difference between how a good Muslim man treats women and how even a good Kiwi man treats women is like chalk and cheese," she says.

"For the first time in my life, I felt [in Kuwait] like I was actually allowed to function totally as a female, as a woman."

Historically, Christians were scandalised by the Muslim tolerance of divorce and polygamy. But the Egyptian woman who was nearly run off the motorway says the two practices are both rare and related: women can divorce as easily as men, and any wife can divorce her husband if he wants to marry another wife.

Compared with the ban on divorce which persists in the Catholic Church even today, Muslims see their religion as liberating.

"It's the individual's right to break up the marriage if they feel it's not working out," says the Egyptian woman's husband.

In other ways, however, Islam today is very similar to orthodox Christianity. Muhammad, born 570 years after Jesus, simply adopted the Old and New Testaments and added the Koran as a detailed set of instructions for daily life, to complement the narrative stories of the Bible.

Like our Christian ancestors, Muslims are taught to live clean and simple lives. Abdul Hafeez Rasheed's Mt Roskill home and the Ponsonby mosque are both plain and sparsely furnished. Muslims are forbidden to touch drugs or gambling as well as alcohol, and fasting is dictated for the month of Ramadan, like the Christian Lent.

More controversially, martyrdom is as much honoured in modern Islam as it was in the days of the Christian saints.

"Think not of those who are slain in Allah's way as dead. Nay, they live, finding their sustenance in the presence of the Lord," says the Koran.

Or: "Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you, but do not transgress limits, for Allah loveth not transgressors.

"And slay them wherever ye catch them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out; for tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter.

"But fight them not at the sacred mosque unless they first fight you there; but if they fight you, slay them. Such is the reward of those who suppress faith."

The explanatory note under this passage says: "War is permissible in self-defence and under well-defined limits. When undertaken, it must be pushed with vigour (but not relentlessly), but only to restore peace and freedom for the worship of Allah."

Rasheed believes that Muhammad was "the final and the chosen prophet of God" and that Islam will be "the final religion".

"After him there will be no more prophets and there will be no other religion but Islam - maybe in 1000 years, maybe in a million years, but it will be so."

He believes the West has "demonised" Islam when, in fact, neither Saddam Hussein nor the Taleban are true Muslims.

"The Taleban say they want to follow Islam, but where is it shown that a woman should not go to school?" he asks. "The first word in the Koran is 'Iqra', which means 'read, proclaim'.

"The West does not want anywhere an Islamic form of government to come in, the Sharia Law, because they know that when this Sharia Law comes without interference, it is the perfect way, it is God's way that this world should be run."

He objects to treating the term "fundamentalist" as derogatory.

"We are all one human race, we are all created by the same God," he says.

"I must not cheat, lie, hate, I must pray five times a day, grow a beard [because Muhammad was bearded], not drink, teach your children to read. That is 'fundamentalism'.

"I am a 'fundamentalist' but I am not an 'extremist'. I must be kind to my fellow beings - to animals, to plants - and try to contribute to a peaceful and harmonious society. What's wrong with that?"

For all the abuse local Muslims have suffered, there has also been sympathy. One woman who took flowers to the American Consulate after the New York and Washington terrorist attacks also knew of Zayed College because she often visited the SPCA next door. So she took the girls a bunch of flowers as well because she guessed how they would be feeling.

The Ponsonby mosque has received a few abusive phone calls, but also two bouquets of flowers and three cards.

One card, signed simply "Dianne", said: "I am a white New Zealander and saw on the news where some people of Middle Eastern races were experiencing some negative behaviour. I just wanted to say how sorry I am."

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