NZ Islamists promote peace
ON FRIDAY afternoons, Muslim converts gather at a drop-in centre in suburban Christchurch to chat and teach anyone who’s interested about Islam.
They have taken names like Abu Hamzah and Abdul Hakeem. One has kept his old name – Nathan Jones. He is the younger brother of Daryl Jones, also known as Muslim bin John, killed by an American drone last year. Nathan Jones and his friends set up the centre to promote Salafism, a sect which follows strict Islam as practised in Mohammed’s time. Some Salafi followers in Western countries espouse jihad but Jones and his friends denounce violence. Flyers in the window proclaim that ‘‘terrorists kill Muslims and non-Muslims indiscriminately’’.
Jones, married to an Iraqi woman, declined to comment about his brother or his religious beliefs but his friends said Daryl Jones had followed a ‘‘deviant’’ ideaology. ‘‘Orthodox Islam does not teach us to kill innocent people and to blow up trains and strap bombs to ourselves,’’ said Abu Hamzah. ‘‘[Daryl] was following . . . an extremist ideology in the ways of [Osama] bin Laden and we never agreed with that ideology. We speak against it.’’
Hamzah said Muslims in New Zealand were peaceful. ‘‘I’ve been up and down this country and to every single masjid [mosque] there is, almost, and I have met how many people with this radical idea? Two [Jones and Christopher Havard]. And where are they now? Apparently dead. Nathan’s brother . . . went to Yemen, he was on some deviant ideology, he thought he’d go join a group and got killed by a drone.’’
Another convert, Abdul Hakeem Laughton, said ‘‘we were advising Saleem [Havard] a long time ago that his ideology was wrong, he didn’t take the advice on board.’’
Hamzah said Havard and Jones listened to radical preachers like Anwar al-Awlaki and were ‘‘overcome by emotions’’ over the killing of Muslims. ‘‘We feel pain for our Muslim brothers and we ask almighty Lord to change the situation but we do it based on morals and knowledge. If we did it based on emotions we’d probably be there [Yemen] too.’’