Christchurch terror attack
dysfunctional, with individuals drifting in and out constantly,’’ Drury wrote in his thesis.
Throughout the 2000s, the Christchurch Muslim community found itself on the defensive, following a wave of anti-Muslim sentiment throughout the West.
Christchurch Muslims unanimously condemned violent extremism and continued their outreach to the wider community. Three weeks after the September 2001 attacks in the United States, a Press reporter visited the Masjid Al-Noor, where Muslim leaders shared their dismay.
‘‘Islam condemns any acts that encourage disharmony within communities and between human beings, ‘‘ said Sheikh Abdulrahman, who was then imam of the mosque.
‘‘Forget about doing an act by hand, you can’t even put something bad in your heart for another human being.’’
Many Muslims were awake when the first earthquake struck Canterbury in September 2010 – it was the third week of Ramadan.
The mosque itself was largely unaffected, and Muslims joined other faiths in showing solidarity to the 185 victims of the second earthquake in February 2011, as well as the Anglican Church, which lost its main centre of worship, the Christ Church Cathedral.
Before Friday’s massacre, leaders in Christchurch’s Muslim community reiterated their commitment to peace in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris that killed 130.
In an interview in 2016 with the Migrant Times, Masjid Al Noor’s imam, Gamal Fouda, again rejected extremism.
‘‘People need to learn about Islam from authentic scholars who represent true Islam, not from those who call themselves Muslims, but hide behind the religion and use it to force their own agenda and create chaos,’’ he said.
‘‘All these groups who call themselves Islamic states, I call them non-Islamic states.
‘‘Un-Islamic. They don’t represent Islam, they do not represent Muslims ... God created us all and we are brothers and sisters in humanity.’’
Fouda survived Friday’s terrorist attack.
It wasn’t until 2017 that the Muslim community in Christchurch became so large that a second mosque was needed. The Linwood Islamic Centre was formally founded in 2018 in a building in Linwood Ave that had housed the Linwood Community Centre. It was a passion project led by Ibrahim Abdelhalim, originally from Egypt.
The building was earthquake damaged, and had been sold in an ‘‘as is, where is’’ condition in 2016.
The Muslim community worked to raise the money needed to buy the building, which they did in June 2018 for $400,000, property records show. The community was planning to renovate the worn interior of the building; they had recently installed new carpet. On Friday, 80 people were in the newly formed mosque, praying, with their backs turned to the main door at the rear of the mosque.
Abdelhalim, who had poured his soul into creating the Linwood mosque, was defiant when speaking to reporters on Saturday.
‘‘We are never going to stop going to the mosque to pray to our God, because this country accepts all religions, all the people who come from every nationality, every language,’’ he said. ‘‘We are part of New Zealand, whether [the attackers] accept that or not.’’