Warm memories of the Muslim community

IN 19992000, I travelled through Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Turkey.

In some ways, it was a very different time, when a traveller could marvel safely at the history, similarities and differences in the world around us.

As a single young women, I will admit that I often felt annoyed with unwelcome advances of young men, as I was certainly a oddity. However, I never felt unsafe. I always felt welcome, as families often opened their homes to me, inviting me in to share food, stories and music, and we would discuss similarities and differences.

I will never forget the hospitality. My friend was drugged and robbed in Turkey, but my lasting memory is the community banding together around us, to help me to nurse my friend back to health and safely restore passport and financial requirements, so they could continue independently.

Not only did I feel safe, I often felt protected, as families would often engulf me in a protective circle in the streets, when they thought I looked sad, scared or threatened, or just because I was alone.

As part of New Zealand, and part of the diversity of our place, I only hope that we can engulf the Muslim community in love and protection.

Your culture made me feel like family, and that I was protected and cared for, on the other side of the world, far from my home country.

Now that we share the same country, I hope we make you feel like family, and cloak you in the same protective, loving cloak that your community cloaked me in.

May we never stop caring and loving and embracing all of our diversity. Tania Henwood

Dunedin

[Abridged]

IT is quite appalling to see the preorchestrated resistance by New Zealand gun enthusiasts and their representatives to any changes in New Zealand’s gun laws.

There is no doubt these laws are too lax and permissive. In particular, semiautomatic weapons need to be banned outright, including pumpaction shotguns.

They are totally unsportsmanlike weapons and require no skill in their use, and as we have just experienced in Christchurch, one shooter can kill many people in a very short time.

These lobbyists need to look closely at themselves, at their motivations, and their total disregard of any factors other than their own selfish gratification.

In spite of their protestations to the contrary, it is utter nonsense for them to argue that the ban on semiautomatic weapons in Australia, after the Port Arthur massacre, has had no effect.

Do you want us to be like America, where gun availability enables a continuous stream of mass shootings at schools, churches, synagogues, mosques, and rock concerts?

After every one, America says, ‘‘This must never happen again! Something must be done!’’. But nothing ever is, because of the powerful American gun lobby, the National Rifle Association.

We must not allow the same here. These gun ownership advocates are not the majority. They must not be allowed to dilute what needs to be done.

Clyde Scott

Auckland

[Abridged] ONCE the shock and horror over last Friday’s horrendous massacre settle, I think good will come of it.

New Zealand has reached out to its Muslim community in its time of need, and this has generated a new awareness. The Muslim community will become more part of the New Zealand community than perhaps it was.

Due to the notoriety of al Qaeda and Isis, we have been conditioned to think of Muslims as potential terrorists. This tragedy has emphasised to us that only a very small minority of Muslims are terrorists — just as a very small minority of white people are white supremacists.

Muslims will be able to feel, and will be seen as, an integral part of the New Zealand multicultural family.

Tim Herrick

Wanaka