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THE HEIGHTS: A SHORT HISTORY OF THE MUSLIMS OF NEW ZEALAND History of NZ Continued – 2020 The first Muslims to visit New Zealand were lascars, Asian sailors, who worked on board European vessels. Two Indian Muslim sailors toured the Northland coast in December 1769 on a French ship named the Saint Jean-Baptiste. The crew Muster Roll included ‘Mamouth Cassem’ (presumably Mahmud Qasim) and a 16 year old Bengali named ‘Nasrin’. Following this date many British East India Company ships with lascar crews and even a few sepoys (Indian soldiers) visited New Zealand. The first Muslim family to reside permanently arrived in April 1854, when Wuzerah and his family entered Lyttelton in 1854 and settled in Cashmere, in the Canterbury province, to work for Sir John Cracroft Wilson. Wuzerah was also involved in transporting stone from the Port Hills to the Christchurch Cathedral when it was constructed. He died in 1902 and was buried in Sydenham, Christchurch. From the 1890s onward men from the Punjab and Gujarat regions of India started arriving and after the 1930s some of these men or their sons began to bring out wives and children. The first Islamic organisation in this country was created in 1950 when the “New Zealand Muslim Association” (NZMA) was formed in Auckland. At the time there were around 200 Muslims in the entire country. In 1951 the MS Goya brought dozens of Muslim refugees from eastern Europe to Wellington. In 1959 the NZMA acquired a property for use as an Islamic Centre and the following year Maulana Ahmed Said Musa Patel (1937-2009) arrived from the Gujarat to serve the NZMA as the first official Mullah. The Association erected the first purpose-built mosque in New Zealand over 1979-1980, in Ponsonby, central Auckland. Over the 1960s and 1970s there was an influx of east European, Asian and Fiji Indian migrants, refugees and students who helped create new regional Muslim organisations. In 1979 there were around 2000 Muslims in all New Zealand and agents of the various Islamic Associations convened to construct a nation-wide Muslim organisation to co-ordinate communal affairs at a national level. In April 1979 the “Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand” was created and in 1984 the Federation secured its first annual Halal meat contract with the NZ Meat Producers Board. In March 2019 over 50 Muslims were murdered at prayer inside two mosques in Christchurch by a lone gunman. According to the 2013 census there are presently 47,799 Muslims in New Zealand: around 21% were born in the Pacific Islands, 25% in New Zealand, 23 % in Africa and the Middle East and 26% in Asia. These statistics revealed that over 32,000 Muslims live in Auckland and that 20,000 Muslims in New Zealand identified as Asian. For further information, see: Abdullah Drury, “Mahometans on the Edge of Colonial Empire: Antipodean Experiences” in Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations, Volume 29, Issue 1, pp. 71-87. Sheppard, William, “New Zealand’s Muslims and Their Organisations”, New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies Volume 8, Number 2 (December, 2006), pp. 8–44. Published in 11th Edition – 2020
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History continues ..
STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS : A SHORT HISTORY OF THE MUSLIMS OF NEW ZEALAND – 2015 – 6th E A Brief History of NZ Muslims – 2016 – 7th E BELIEVERS TO THE BRIGHT COAST: A SHORT HISTORY OF THE MUSLIMS OF NEW ZEALAND – 2017 – 8th E GOD’S TRUTH: A SHORT HISTORY OF THE MUSLIMS OF NEW ZEALAND – 2018 – 9th E THE TABLE SPREAD: A SHORT HISTORY OF THE MUSLIMS OF NEW ZEALAND – 2019 – 10th E THE HEIGHTS: A SHORT HISTORY OF THE MUSLIMS OF NEW ZEALAND – 2020 – 11th E COUNTRY MATTERS: A SHORT HISTORY OF THE MUSLIMS OF NEW ZEALAND – 2021 – 12th E MATCHINGS SCARS: A SHORT HISTORY OF THE MUSLIMS OF NEW ZEALAND – 2022 – 13th E SOMETHING ELSE: A SHORT HISTORY OF THE MUSLIMS OF NEW ZEALAND – 2023 – 14th E |