Muslims feel unsafe a year after NZ killings

Aliya Danzeisen rises before dawn every day to hear the news so she can prepare her school-age daughters for any harassment they may face for being Muslim.

“We don’t feel any safer,” the Muslim community leader says, reflecting on the 12 months since the mosque attacks here, in which a self-declared white supremacist killed 51 people at Friday prayers.

The abuse experienced prior to the attacks on March 15 last year died down immediately after the killings, Danzeisen said, adding: “It felt the entire New Zealand was rallying behind us.”

But she says it is now on the rise again, a year on from the killings that rattled the peaceful South Pacific nation, with unease among the Muslim community amid vitriol and threats.

Anjum Rahman, co-founder of the Islamic Women’s Council of New Zealand, said there was an “undercurrent or rhetoric of hate. It isn’t just our community, we see it a lot in online hate (towards) the transgender community. I wouldn’t say it’s specifically just us, but we’re feeling it”.

Danzeisen said she felt it was important to brief her daughters about global incidents so they could handle intimidation.

The impact spreads beyond New Zealand. At the Al Noor Mosque, Jabara Akhter Juti said her family in Bangladesh remain “concerned” since she moved here last year with her husband.

The imam at Al Noor, Gamal Fouda, wanted the broader impact of extremism addressed and not just confined to Muslims.

“That was a war against New Zealand, not only against Muslims, because today it is against one group, tomorrow against another group, people of other ethnic backgrounds are targeted,” he said.