Five years on: 15 March 2019
Three years after the massacre that took the lives of 51 shuhada (martyrs) during Jummah (Friday) prayers in Christchurch, Aotearoa New Zealand, the United Nations designated 15 March to be International Day To Combat Islamophobia.
On 15 March 2019, I was home, sick, from work listening to the news and getting messages from my family members that were having police show up to the prayer spaces and mosques. Five years ago, my world shifted in little old ‘peaceful’ New Zealand — to a place where my identity was no longer just one of where I could not belong, but one where my very existence could be threatened.
One year after the attacks, I was interviewed on TVNZ 1 Q+A and asked to share the one thing I would like New Zealand to do. In my interview I called for commitment to holding ourselves accountable to eliminating racism and discrimination with shared action, on the individual level as well as the policy level.
Eight months after the attacks, I finally found the courage again to step back into speaking engagements. I was invited to speak at the M2Woman Journey to Excellence Forum where I shared how there was so much to do but that I held so much heart and hope for how our community, Aotearoa New Zealand and the world would come together against Islamophobia.
Four years after the attacks, I was at my grandmother’s house with my father in my ancestral home, reading on headlines the justifications for withdrawing proposed hate speech laws.
Five years from the massacre, another Jummah, this time during the holy month of Ramadan, I sat on my prayer mat remembering the 51 shuhada. I have supported and been part of the activism and strive for policy change on various levels, I struggle to have as much heart or hope anymore for change, for this incident to live in the lives of non-Muslims in New Zealand as it does in our lives.
Yet we continue on our path - to keep alive the courage of the shuhada, through my work with the Oversight Committee of The Code of Practice for Online Safety and Harms, and through supporting Muslim women across Aotearoa New Zealand and globally to be seen and heard. And I remember the many Muslim lives that are being lost without lasting peace and eradication of Islamophobic policies and sentiments.
