This Is Fine and This Isn't Us: Kiwi Denialism

Warning: this article is about the March 15th terrorist attacks and Islamophobia. Consider that if reading about either or both of those topics might be difficult for you.

When I was a kid, my parents would take me to watch the Crusaders games. I loved when the knights rode out on their steeds to churn up the fringes of the field. I was distantly aware of the Crusades, but that was all just history. Cardboard characters. Richard the Lionheart. Saladin. Fighting each other over religion, no instigator, no victim. In reality, crusaders spent months arming up and travelling thousands of kilometers to kill Muslims.

But it’s not like anyone does that anymore.

2:46 p.m today: “Al Noor Imam Gamal Fouda abused while walking with Jacinda Ardern”. That is shameful. It is tragic that it is not over for him. What did Prime Minister Ardern have to say, the last time the Imam was attacked? “This is not us.” I’m sure the bigot yelling at the Imam is just an Australian, too. No way that there could be New Zealanders who hate Muslims. Inconceivable.

The instinct was to disown the March 15th attacks, to say that we’d never do this and that the terrorist was Australian. So many of us were caught by surprise that someone would attack mosques in New Zealand. Were we listening to Muslim community leaders and representatives, laying out their concerns and needs? Or to bigots afraid of Islam and Muslims?

Our own Deputy Prime Minister, Winston Peters, got praise from everyone from Reuters to Gone by Lunchtime for his response as Foreign Minister. In 2005, 2013, 2016, and 2017, he betrayed that he suspects Muslims, and believes the only good Muslim is one who concurs with his suspicion of other Muslims. Too many people who think Winston is a goner and want him out still find him funny, or admire how he “tells it like it is”. The French DGSE has mounted more terrorist attacks in New Zealand than Muslims - 1-0. To “tell it like it is”, admit there is no link between the New Zealand Muslim community and terror.

Islamophobia wasn’t taken seriously. Neither was radicalisation on the internet, ignored by a Parliament whose members average 50 years old, and a Cabinet with one member under 40. Failures, too, were gun laws that permitted one terrorist to proceed every step of the way. He obtained a firearms license (police failed to interview a family member, settling for two guys he knew in an online chatroom - you cannot make this up). He bought six guns (several modified, two illegally), and over seven thousand rounds of ammunition. He plastered them with Crusader iconography. At no step were authorities aware or afraid of this. They failed fifty one Muslims who died, and every one made to live in fear.

We need to stop another attack. How? Gun law reform is a separate topic from Islamophobia and right-wing extremism, so I think only two facts are relevant. One, it’s telling that the strongest response was against weapons that could threaten anyone. It wasn’t just anyone who was shot. It was Muslims killed for their faith. Two, an estimated 51 MPs of the incoming Parliament are part of parties pledged to repealing some of those reforms. Lastly, our Prime Minister led the “Christchurch Call” for reform of social media company practices. I can only congratulate the companies on what a sterling, bang-up job they have since done at handling online radicalisation and hate.

The most debate I heard about the response was offense taken at the Crusaders changing their name (they haven’t). Who, high or low, was listening to voices of the Muslim community? Who heard Muslim people telling the Human Rights Foundation that the SIS was breaching their privacy by surveilling them? Who heard the Islamic Women’s Council's submission that police and government agencies had ignored warnings of threats and about planned terrorist strikes? Crickets. You know what else organisations tasked to protect didn’t hear a peep about? For ten years? That right-wing extremism existed. They preferred to spy on peaceful civilians over militants with seven thousand rounds and six guns screaming danger.

The report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry is due on the 26th next month. Nearly two years after, there may be answers. Do we trust that anything will be done? Put another way: do we have any reason to believe there couldn’t be a white supremacist attack any day now? I have no reason to believe that there are not people in New Zealand just as hateful and extreme as in Australia, and the US, and Norway.

For every person stocking guns and making plans right now, ten police and intelligence officers and legislators don’t believe warnings when they come from Muslims. A hundred vote for and support Islamophobic politicians and figures, and defend suspicion of Muslims as warranted, not atrocious. A thousand hear someone spouting abuse like Imam Fouda had to hear today, and they duck their head because they don’t want an argument, or hesitantly smile and nod along because they find it awkward, because it’s easier to let Muslim New Zealanders take the flack down the road.

Finally, how many people heard the Imam today? “This shouldn't be said to anybody else in this country.” He still has to pray that Muslims will not be hurt again, in any way from extremist violence to verbal abuse. “There’s lots of ignorance out there, we need to learn and to educate people as well – we need to start very seriously teaching our children and our friends.” How many, I wonder, will act on his advice.

This is us, and it’s going to be so long as we keep saying it’s not.