03-23-2019, 02:35 PM
GIVEN THE OFFICIAL COVERUP ALL WE KNOW IS THAT SATANIST BRENTON TARRANT IS AN AUSTRALIAN CITIZEN AND HE IS THE PERPETRATOR AND FRONTMAN OF AN EVIL SATANIC RITUAL OF MASS MURDER OF MUSLIM MARTYRS IN MOSQUES DURING JUMAAH PRAYERS. THIS HAS TO BE MORE THAN A TIME OF FEAR AND REFLECTION BUT OF GLOBAL UNITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY. AUSSIES AND KIWIS AND THEIR LAND DOWN UNDER ISN'T SOME UTOPIA BUT PART AND PARCEL OF THE USA NATO ISRAELI INDIAN AXIS OF EVIL AND ISLAMOPHOBIA AND NEEDS TO BE EXPOSED. THE ONLY LANGUAGE THESE PEOPLE UNDERSTAND IS FORCE AND IT IS TIME THAT THEIR EXPORTS OF MURDOCH'S EVIL MEDIA EMPIRE IS EXPOSED AND BOYCOTTED AND THEIR EXPORTS OF HALAL MEAT TRADE TO THE ISLAMIC WORLD BOYCOTTED. I AM SURE THAT MUSLIM COUNTRIES PRODUCING HALAL MEAT WILL BE PLEASED TO REPLACE THEIR PRODUCE. THOSE AT THE FOREFRONT OF ISLAMOPHOBIA NEED TO START PAYING A HIGH PRICE STARTING WITH THEIR POCKETS AND IF NECESSARY USING FORCE IN SELF DEFENCE. THE CASE AGAINST AUSTRALIA WILL BE FORTHCOMING.
AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER SCOTT MORRISON HAS HEATED INTERVIEW WITH TV HOST WALEED ALY
https://www.trtworld.com/video/social-videos/australian-prime-minister-scott-morrison-has-heated-interview-with-tv-host-waleed-aly/5c94fc2f5788bd644f8bd98.4
NEW ZEALAND MOSQUE MASSACRE:
WHITE SUPREMACY AND WESTERN WARS
http://www.unz.com/jpetras/new-zealand-m...stern-wars
The mass murder and wounding of 97 Muslim worshippers in Christchurch, New Zealand (NZ) which took place on Friday, March 15, 2019, has profound political, ideological and psychological roots. First and most important, Western countries led by the Anglo-American world has been at war killing and uprooting millions of Muslims with impunity over the past thirty years. Leading media pundits, political spokespeople and ideologues have identified Muslims as a global terror threat and the targets of a ‘war against terror’. On the very day of the NZ massacre, Israel launched large-scale air attacks on one hundred targets in Gaza. Israel has killed several hundred and wounded over twenty thousand unarmed Palestinians in less than two years. The Israeli massacres take place on Friday the Muslim Sabbath.
Islamophobia is a mass ongoing phenomenon which far exceeds other ‘hate crimes’ throughout the west and permeate Judeo-Christian cultural-political institutions. Western and Israeli political leaders having imposed extremely restrictive immigration policies – in some countries a complete ban on Muslim immigrants. Israel goes a step further by uprooting and expelling long-standing Islamic residents. Clearly the NZ murderer followed the Western/Israeli practice.
Secondly, in recent years, violent fascist and white supremacy thugs have been tolerated by all the Western regimes and are free to propagate violent anti-Muslim words and deeds. Most of the anti-Muslim massacres were announced in advance on the so-called social media such as Twitter, which reaches millions of followers.
Thirdly, while the local and federal police collect ‘data’ and spy on Muslims and law-abiding citizens, they apparently fail to include self-identified murderous anti-Muslim advocates. Such as the case in the recent New Zealand mass murderer, Brenton Torrant. The police and NZ Security Intelligence Services did not keep files and surveillance on Torrant, despite his open embrace of violent white supremacy and leading supremacists including the Norwegian Anders Brevet murderer of over 70 children- campers. Torrant published a 74 page anti-Muslim manifesto easily available to anyone with a computer – even a dumb cop– let along the entire New Zealand security forces. Torrant planned the attack months in advance, yet he was not on any ‘watch list’. Torrant had no trouble getting a gun license and buying a dozen high-powered weapons, including the material for improvised explosive devices (IED), which the police later discovered attached to a vehicle.
What accounts for the total absence or failure of the political authorities and security forces: the lack of prior investigation; the delays at the time of the crimes; and the lack of any self-criticism?
The Rise of the Anti-Immigrant anti-Muslim Far Right
The massacre was a result of the fact that the victims were Muslims, in a mosque. The tears and wreaths, the prayers and flags after the fact do not and will not change the murder of Muslim people.
Educational campaigns to counter Islamophobia may help, if and only if effective state action is directed against the Western and Israeli wars against Islamic countries and people. Only when Western elected officials end imposing special restrictions against so-called ‘invading’ Muslims, will ‘White supremacists’ and their ideological offspring cease recruiting followers among otherwise normal citizens. Massacres at mosques and crimes against individual Muslims will cease to occur when imperialist states and their rulers stop invading, occupying and uprooting Islamic countries and people.
TODAY I'M A NEW ZEALANDER
Khaled A Beydoun
Khaled A Beydoun is a law professor, and author of American Islamophobia: Understanding the Roots and Rise of Fear.
As Jacinda Ardern walked up to the microphone, the weight of the world seemed to fall squarely on her shoulders.
"Asalamu alaikum!" New Zealand's prime minister uttered the universal Islamic greeting with grace and familiarity in front of thousands of mourners in attendance and millions more glued to TV screens. At this very moment, exactly one week after 50 of her countrymen and women were massacred, she didn't push Islam to the margins and away from the cameras, but deliberately chose to bring it alongside her for the whole world to see.
She collected her breath, paused while everybody waited for her subsequent words and then read a saying of Prophet Muhammad.
"According to Prophet Muhammad - salla Allahu alayhi wa salaam (peace be upon him) - the believers in their mutual kindness, compassion and sympathy are just like one body. When any part of the body suffers, the whole body feels pain," she said. "New Zealand mourns with you, we are one."
Her message was clear. Islam is neither the "other" nor the "invader". Islam is New Zealand and those adhering to it, departed or alive, are at home in this country.
Over the previous week, Ardern had donned a hijab while grieving alongside mourning families, listened attentively while attending recovering mosques, and most potently, repeated and repeated the names of the 50 Muslim victims.
She had refused to utter the terrorist's name, stating: "He is a terrorist. He is a criminal. He is an extremist. But he will, when I speak, be nameless."
Clad in a hijab, a headscarf worn by many Muslim women who feel it is part of their religion, and a traditional black gown, Prime Minister Ardern chose to shine a light on Islam - for all the world to see - precisely 168 hours after a "white supremacist" shot worshippers in two mosques.
"We are one," she closed, echoing the message of the prophet. Then walked to join the rest of the gathering in Christchurch to listen to the adhan - the Islamic call to prayer - broadcast live throughout the entire country.
It was powerful, sublime, muscular and unapologetic. It was an unprecedented gesture on a stage of such magnitude and more importantly, it was far more than mere symbolism or political bluster. The sincerity streamed from a place of empathy - empathy that absorbed the full violence of Islamophobia - which for her and the whole country, unfolded in real time and right before their eyes.
The massacres at Al Noor and Linwood mosques highlighted the reach and realness of that evil. It also revealed its relationship to the loaded rhetoric unleashed by political populists, most notably America's Donald Trump and France's Marine Le Pen, whose brazen demonisation of Islam and its adherents, have been arming white supremacist ideologies and equipping them with ammunition. After the Christchurch attack, it became crystal clear that xenophobic populism, and the Islamophobia it wields, is not empty rhetoric or a distant phenomenon. It is an enemy within.
The shock of the massacre comes at a time when western democracies are being reshaped in line with the image of xenophobic and white supremacist populism. This process has pushed for the imposition of veil and Muslim travel bans, mounting surveillance, and restrictions on public calls to prayer - all policies, which the Christchurch terrorist claimed as inspirations.
On March 15, New Zealand and its prime minister came to understand how these policies radicalise terrorists like him and what the risks are of following in Europe and the United States's supremacist spiral.
In the aftermath of New Zealand's deadliest attack, Ardern turned away from this global Islamophobic tide. Instead, she embraced everything that the West has come to hate: the headscarf, the religion which it symbolises and its final messenger and prophet. As her country stood silent and the whole world was watching, the call to prayer rang and reverberated as a decisive blow to the politics of Islamophobia gripping governments across the globe.
This wasn't political posturing. It was personal. Fifty New Zealanders, 50 of Ardern's people, were murdered only miles away from where she donned the hijab so gracefully, quoted the prophet so eloquently and listened to the Islamic prayer so honourably.
In the turbulence of the attack aftermath, Ardern was shaping a new model of engagement with Islam for her people to follow, and with the attention of the world locked in on New Zealand, challenged the reign of global Islamophobia. This new model does not espouse religion as a marker of difference, but rather - in the words of black feminist Audre Lorde - as an item to be recognised and celebrated.
This was more than just a tribute. It was a transformative precedent for the world to see and learn from. As the adhan rang through the streets of Christchurch, it was clear for the whole world, for Muslims and non-Muslims alike, that Ardern had answered the call to confront - both in walk and word - the Islamophobia that had ravaged her country and claimed the lives of 50 of her people.
Today, I am a New Zealander.
THE HYPOCRISY OF NEW ZEALAND's THIS IS NOT US CLAIM
Is Brenton Tarrant really an aberration?
In response to what has been described as New Zealand's biggest "terrorist" attack, in which 50 people were shot and killed in two mosques in the city of Christchurch, Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern declared:
"We were not a target because we are a safe harbour for those who hate. We were not chosen for this act of violence because we condone racism, because we are an enclave for extremism. We were chosen for the very fact that we are none of these things."
As a Muslim who grew up in New Zealand, this statement didn't sit well with me. Over the years, I've heard it repeated by Kiwis in a ritualistic fashion, always praising the values of multicultural society. I also hear similar self-congratulatory statements in Australia, where I'm now based.
This same narcissistic self-view has often prompted New Zealanders and Australians to declare that I must be "glad" to be in their respective countries. After all, they see Afghanistan, where I come from, as the land of "burqas", intolerance and fundamentalist violence.
In our "post"-colonial reality, racism still determines who "we" are and who "they" must be. It is what produces statements like "this is not us" that seek to absolve and reject responsibility and shame, and replace them with fragile innocence and even pride.
It is what preserves the comforting conviction that "extremism" and violence are only features of "backward" societies; "our" civilised societies in New Zealand, Australia and the West do not espouse such barbarism and the few of "us" who do, do not represent "us" and are not a product of "our" cultures. What struck me about Ardern's statement - and the many others like it praising diversity, the welcoming nature of Kiwis, and the provincial shire with a small tight-knit community - is how dishonest it is. While Muslims were made part of her collective "we", this recent inclusion only emphasised their status as the "other".
Although Islam has a century-long presence in the country, Muslims continue to be portrayed and treated as immigrant and refugees - ie inherently "foreign". They are either "welcomed" or told to "go back" to where they came from - with both sentiments demonstrating that they are not really seen by the majority as an integral part of New Zealand's society.
The hashtag #theyareus, which was started to show solidarity with the victims of the Christchurch attack, is an ironic admission of this pervasive perception that Muslims are permanent outsiders. This oscillation of "they" (the barbarian) and "us" (the fully civilised human) reveals the precarious nature of a Muslim's life and its place in the nation. Colonial governance has historically relied on exactly the same distinction of human/non-human, us/them in order to legitimise its mission to "civilise" and provide a rationale for the violent strategies it uses to manage native populations .
New Zealand has a relatively low profile regarding terrorism and Islamophobia, which allows politicians like Prime Minister Ardern to present the country to the world as a peaceful one that values diversity. Yet, the reality on the ground shows this is not always the case. The Muslim community has been the main target of intensified mass surveillance and security measures undertaken by the state. Islamophobia within the society has also been on the rise, with Muslims facing attacks and countless public microaggressions on a daily basis.
A 2017 study of 16,000 people showed a strong correlation between high media consumption and having hostile and prejudiced views of Muslims. Members of my family who are visibly Muslim have experienced the real-life consequences of these Islamophobic attitudes. Cars have sped up towards them as they have tried to cross the street; in public spaces, they have been called terrorists or have been asked to take off the veil.
Then every time something involving a Muslim has occurred somewhere in the West, the collective "we" has always felt the need to test the loyalties of the "suspect" Muslim community. Back in 2017, then MP and now current Foreign Minister Winston Peters commented on the London Bridge attack, saying:
"What is happening is that families, friends, and confidants are choosing to turn the other cheek, choosing silence, rather than turn these monsters in. That may be the culture of Damascus, but it is not ours. It may be acceptable in Tripoli, but it most certainly is not acceptable in New Zealand. While the Islamic community must clean house by turning these monsters in, it starts with their own families."
In neighbouring Australia, the situation is no better. In 2015, then Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott demanded that Muslim leaders declare Islam a religion of peace more often and really "mean it". His successor, Scott Morrison, expressed concerns about Muslim immigrants and their "inability" to integrate. Right-wing politicians like Pauline Hanson, Fraser Anning, Cory Bernardi and Jacqui Lambie, have repeatedly attacked the Muslim community and incessantly talked about the threatening "spread" of Islam. The "left" has been equally preoccupied with imagined Muslim "threats". In 2017, when Muslim leaders suggested that "safe spaces" should be set up for young Muslims in Victoria to discuss freely their grievances, Labor Premier Daniel Andrews objected to the project, saying he was "very troubled" about the prospect of Muslim youth "railing against the values we hold dear".
In both Australia and New Zealand, rampant Islamophobia in the political scene has been amplified by equally racist media which have systematically portrayed Muslims as inherently violent and "backward" and Islam as an ideology justifying violence and the subjugation of women.
In both countries, the political discourse has been strangled by the banality of centrism, its depoliticising pull reducing urgent issues to hollow statements of interfaith dialogue, social cohesion, multiculturalism, and community resilience. This has resulted in a dishonest conversation and a public who now see political emotions as truth.
Meanwhile, Muslims and other minorities bearing the brunt of public racism have been systematically silenced, forced into a non-conversation. This has had devastating effects on the Muslim discourse which has been stripped of any political power, reduced to respectability politics and a crisis of leadership. The depoliticisation of the Muslim community has alienated the younger generations and has led to many of its members internalising Islamophobic stereotypes and engaging in self-surveillance.
That this environment of hate and othering spawned someone like Brenton Tarrant, nurturing his Islamophobia and aggression to the point that he deemed it his "duty" to raid two mosques and kill 50 innocent worshippers is by no means surprising. Tarrant is not an aberration, he's not an exception; he is an integral part of the collective "we" in New Zealand, Australia, and the "West" - just like the followers of Trumpism are part and parcel of modern-day America.
To argue the opposite is plain denialism and a cowardly flight into the white liberal sanctuary of the "third way" from the discomfort of reality. Ardern's words were uttered at a moment of vulnerability as an exaltation of what New Zealand is not and will never be. They signal that the majority is refusing and rejecting shame, the experience of which is key in the pursuit of restorative justice. Unlike pride and hate, the feeling of shame involves self-judgement; embracing it shows a willingness to be transformed by it. In the wake of the Christchurch attack, however, we have not seen the willingness or courage required to confront Islamophobia as an everyday practice and political policy.
AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER SCOTT MORRISON HAS HEATED INTERVIEW WITH TV HOST WALEED ALY
https://www.trtworld.com/video/social-videos/australian-prime-minister-scott-morrison-has-heated-interview-with-tv-host-waleed-aly/5c94fc2f5788bd644f8bd98.4
NEW ZEALAND MOSQUE MASSACRE:
WHITE SUPREMACY AND WESTERN WARS
http://www.unz.com/jpetras/new-zealand-m...stern-wars
The mass murder and wounding of 97 Muslim worshippers in Christchurch, New Zealand (NZ) which took place on Friday, March 15, 2019, has profound political, ideological and psychological roots. First and most important, Western countries led by the Anglo-American world has been at war killing and uprooting millions of Muslims with impunity over the past thirty years. Leading media pundits, political spokespeople and ideologues have identified Muslims as a global terror threat and the targets of a ‘war against terror’. On the very day of the NZ massacre, Israel launched large-scale air attacks on one hundred targets in Gaza. Israel has killed several hundred and wounded over twenty thousand unarmed Palestinians in less than two years. The Israeli massacres take place on Friday the Muslim Sabbath.
Islamophobia is a mass ongoing phenomenon which far exceeds other ‘hate crimes’ throughout the west and permeate Judeo-Christian cultural-political institutions. Western and Israeli political leaders having imposed extremely restrictive immigration policies – in some countries a complete ban on Muslim immigrants. Israel goes a step further by uprooting and expelling long-standing Islamic residents. Clearly the NZ murderer followed the Western/Israeli practice.
Secondly, in recent years, violent fascist and white supremacy thugs have been tolerated by all the Western regimes and are free to propagate violent anti-Muslim words and deeds. Most of the anti-Muslim massacres were announced in advance on the so-called social media such as Twitter, which reaches millions of followers.
Thirdly, while the local and federal police collect ‘data’ and spy on Muslims and law-abiding citizens, they apparently fail to include self-identified murderous anti-Muslim advocates. Such as the case in the recent New Zealand mass murderer, Brenton Torrant. The police and NZ Security Intelligence Services did not keep files and surveillance on Torrant, despite his open embrace of violent white supremacy and leading supremacists including the Norwegian Anders Brevet murderer of over 70 children- campers. Torrant published a 74 page anti-Muslim manifesto easily available to anyone with a computer – even a dumb cop– let along the entire New Zealand security forces. Torrant planned the attack months in advance, yet he was not on any ‘watch list’. Torrant had no trouble getting a gun license and buying a dozen high-powered weapons, including the material for improvised explosive devices (IED), which the police later discovered attached to a vehicle.
Why were the Police Late
The Al Noor Mosque which suffered the greatest number killed and wounded was in downtown Christchurch less than 5 minutes from the police headquarters – yet the police took over 36 minutes to respond. The white supremacist was allowed time to murder and maim; to leave the mosque and return to his car; reload and re-enter the mosque; empty his ammo on the Muslims worshipping—- using a civilian version of a M16; drive off to the Linwood Islamic Center and slaughter and maim several more Muslim worshipers, before the police finally appeared on the scene and apprehended him. The mayor praised the police! One might suspect the authorities were in connivance!
What accounts for the total absence or failure of the political authorities and security forces: the lack of prior investigation; the delays at the time of the crimes; and the lack of any self-criticism?
The Rise of the Anti-Immigrant anti-Muslim Far Right
The Brenton Torrants’ are proliferating around the world and not because they are mentally disturbed or self-induced psycho paths. They are less products of white supremacy ideology and more likely products of the Western and Israeli wars against Muslims – their leaders provide the rationale, their methods (weapons) and claims of immunity. Western regimes keep files on environmentalist and anti-war protestors but not on anti-Muslim supremacists, openly preparing war against ‘invading’ Muslim immigrants – fleeing US and EU war on the Middle East. The police take a half-minute to respond to the shooting of a police officer. They do not allow police killers to shoot, re-arm, shoot and move on to another police target. I do not believe the delays are local police negligence.
The massacre was a result of the fact that the victims were Muslims, in a mosque. The tears and wreaths, the prayers and flags after the fact do not and will not change the murder of Muslim people.
Educational campaigns to counter Islamophobia may help, if and only if effective state action is directed against the Western and Israeli wars against Islamic countries and people. Only when Western elected officials end imposing special restrictions against so-called ‘invading’ Muslims, will ‘White supremacists’ and their ideological offspring cease recruiting followers among otherwise normal citizens. Massacres at mosques and crimes against individual Muslims will cease to occur when imperialist states and their rulers stop invading, occupying and uprooting Islamic countries and people.
TODAY I'M A NEW ZEALANDER
Khaled A Beydoun
Khaled A Beydoun is a law professor, and author of American Islamophobia: Understanding the Roots and Rise of Fear.
As Jacinda Ardern walked up to the microphone, the weight of the world seemed to fall squarely on her shoulders.
"Asalamu alaikum!" New Zealand's prime minister uttered the universal Islamic greeting with grace and familiarity in front of thousands of mourners in attendance and millions more glued to TV screens. At this very moment, exactly one week after 50 of her countrymen and women were massacred, she didn't push Islam to the margins and away from the cameras, but deliberately chose to bring it alongside her for the whole world to see.
She collected her breath, paused while everybody waited for her subsequent words and then read a saying of Prophet Muhammad.
"According to Prophet Muhammad - salla Allahu alayhi wa salaam (peace be upon him) - the believers in their mutual kindness, compassion and sympathy are just like one body. When any part of the body suffers, the whole body feels pain," she said. "New Zealand mourns with you, we are one."
Her message was clear. Islam is neither the "other" nor the "invader". Islam is New Zealand and those adhering to it, departed or alive, are at home in this country.
Over the previous week, Ardern had donned a hijab while grieving alongside mourning families, listened attentively while attending recovering mosques, and most potently, repeated and repeated the names of the 50 Muslim victims.
She had refused to utter the terrorist's name, stating: "He is a terrorist. He is a criminal. He is an extremist. But he will, when I speak, be nameless."
Clad in a hijab, a headscarf worn by many Muslim women who feel it is part of their religion, and a traditional black gown, Prime Minister Ardern chose to shine a light on Islam - for all the world to see - precisely 168 hours after a "white supremacist" shot worshippers in two mosques.
"We are one," she closed, echoing the message of the prophet. Then walked to join the rest of the gathering in Christchurch to listen to the adhan - the Islamic call to prayer - broadcast live throughout the entire country.
It was powerful, sublime, muscular and unapologetic. It was an unprecedented gesture on a stage of such magnitude and more importantly, it was far more than mere symbolism or political bluster. The sincerity streamed from a place of empathy - empathy that absorbed the full violence of Islamophobia - which for her and the whole country, unfolded in real time and right before their eyes.
The massacres at Al Noor and Linwood mosques highlighted the reach and realness of that evil. It also revealed its relationship to the loaded rhetoric unleashed by political populists, most notably America's Donald Trump and France's Marine Le Pen, whose brazen demonisation of Islam and its adherents, have been arming white supremacist ideologies and equipping them with ammunition. After the Christchurch attack, it became crystal clear that xenophobic populism, and the Islamophobia it wields, is not empty rhetoric or a distant phenomenon. It is an enemy within.
The shock of the massacre comes at a time when western democracies are being reshaped in line with the image of xenophobic and white supremacist populism. This process has pushed for the imposition of veil and Muslim travel bans, mounting surveillance, and restrictions on public calls to prayer - all policies, which the Christchurch terrorist claimed as inspirations.
On March 15, New Zealand and its prime minister came to understand how these policies radicalise terrorists like him and what the risks are of following in Europe and the United States's supremacist spiral.
In the aftermath of New Zealand's deadliest attack, Ardern turned away from this global Islamophobic tide. Instead, she embraced everything that the West has come to hate: the headscarf, the religion which it symbolises and its final messenger and prophet. As her country stood silent and the whole world was watching, the call to prayer rang and reverberated as a decisive blow to the politics of Islamophobia gripping governments across the globe.
This wasn't political posturing. It was personal. Fifty New Zealanders, 50 of Ardern's people, were murdered only miles away from where she donned the hijab so gracefully, quoted the prophet so eloquently and listened to the Islamic prayer so honourably.
In the turbulence of the attack aftermath, Ardern was shaping a new model of engagement with Islam for her people to follow, and with the attention of the world locked in on New Zealand, challenged the reign of global Islamophobia. This new model does not espouse religion as a marker of difference, but rather - in the words of black feminist Audre Lorde - as an item to be recognised and celebrated.
This was more than just a tribute. It was a transformative precedent for the world to see and learn from. As the adhan rang through the streets of Christchurch, it was clear for the whole world, for Muslims and non-Muslims alike, that Ardern had answered the call to confront - both in walk and word - the Islamophobia that had ravaged her country and claimed the lives of 50 of her people.
Today, I am a New Zealander.
THE HYPOCRISY OF NEW ZEALAND's THIS IS NOT US CLAIM
Is Brenton Tarrant really an aberration?
In response to what has been described as New Zealand's biggest "terrorist" attack, in which 50 people were shot and killed in two mosques in the city of Christchurch, Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern declared:
"We were not a target because we are a safe harbour for those who hate. We were not chosen for this act of violence because we condone racism, because we are an enclave for extremism. We were chosen for the very fact that we are none of these things."
As a Muslim who grew up in New Zealand, this statement didn't sit well with me. Over the years, I've heard it repeated by Kiwis in a ritualistic fashion, always praising the values of multicultural society. I also hear similar self-congratulatory statements in Australia, where I'm now based.
This same narcissistic self-view has often prompted New Zealanders and Australians to declare that I must be "glad" to be in their respective countries. After all, they see Afghanistan, where I come from, as the land of "burqas", intolerance and fundamentalist violence.
In our "post"-colonial reality, racism still determines who "we" are and who "they" must be. It is what produces statements like "this is not us" that seek to absolve and reject responsibility and shame, and replace them with fragile innocence and even pride.
It is what preserves the comforting conviction that "extremism" and violence are only features of "backward" societies; "our" civilised societies in New Zealand, Australia and the West do not espouse such barbarism and the few of "us" who do, do not represent "us" and are not a product of "our" cultures. What struck me about Ardern's statement - and the many others like it praising diversity, the welcoming nature of Kiwis, and the provincial shire with a small tight-knit community - is how dishonest it is. While Muslims were made part of her collective "we", this recent inclusion only emphasised their status as the "other".
Although Islam has a century-long presence in the country, Muslims continue to be portrayed and treated as immigrant and refugees - ie inherently "foreign". They are either "welcomed" or told to "go back" to where they came from - with both sentiments demonstrating that they are not really seen by the majority as an integral part of New Zealand's society.
The hashtag #theyareus, which was started to show solidarity with the victims of the Christchurch attack, is an ironic admission of this pervasive perception that Muslims are permanent outsiders. This oscillation of "they" (the barbarian) and "us" (the fully civilised human) reveals the precarious nature of a Muslim's life and its place in the nation. Colonial governance has historically relied on exactly the same distinction of human/non-human, us/them in order to legitimise its mission to "civilise" and provide a rationale for the violent strategies it uses to manage native populations .
New Zealand has a relatively low profile regarding terrorism and Islamophobia, which allows politicians like Prime Minister Ardern to present the country to the world as a peaceful one that values diversity. Yet, the reality on the ground shows this is not always the case. The Muslim community has been the main target of intensified mass surveillance and security measures undertaken by the state. Islamophobia within the society has also been on the rise, with Muslims facing attacks and countless public microaggressions on a daily basis.
A 2017 study of 16,000 people showed a strong correlation between high media consumption and having hostile and prejudiced views of Muslims. Members of my family who are visibly Muslim have experienced the real-life consequences of these Islamophobic attitudes. Cars have sped up towards them as they have tried to cross the street; in public spaces, they have been called terrorists or have been asked to take off the veil.
Then every time something involving a Muslim has occurred somewhere in the West, the collective "we" has always felt the need to test the loyalties of the "suspect" Muslim community. Back in 2017, then MP and now current Foreign Minister Winston Peters commented on the London Bridge attack, saying:
"What is happening is that families, friends, and confidants are choosing to turn the other cheek, choosing silence, rather than turn these monsters in. That may be the culture of Damascus, but it is not ours. It may be acceptable in Tripoli, but it most certainly is not acceptable in New Zealand. While the Islamic community must clean house by turning these monsters in, it starts with their own families."
In neighbouring Australia, the situation is no better. In 2015, then Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott demanded that Muslim leaders declare Islam a religion of peace more often and really "mean it". His successor, Scott Morrison, expressed concerns about Muslim immigrants and their "inability" to integrate. Right-wing politicians like Pauline Hanson, Fraser Anning, Cory Bernardi and Jacqui Lambie, have repeatedly attacked the Muslim community and incessantly talked about the threatening "spread" of Islam. The "left" has been equally preoccupied with imagined Muslim "threats". In 2017, when Muslim leaders suggested that "safe spaces" should be set up for young Muslims in Victoria to discuss freely their grievances, Labor Premier Daniel Andrews objected to the project, saying he was "very troubled" about the prospect of Muslim youth "railing against the values we hold dear".
In both Australia and New Zealand, rampant Islamophobia in the political scene has been amplified by equally racist media which have systematically portrayed Muslims as inherently violent and "backward" and Islam as an ideology justifying violence and the subjugation of women.
In both countries, the political discourse has been strangled by the banality of centrism, its depoliticising pull reducing urgent issues to hollow statements of interfaith dialogue, social cohesion, multiculturalism, and community resilience. This has resulted in a dishonest conversation and a public who now see political emotions as truth.
Meanwhile, Muslims and other minorities bearing the brunt of public racism have been systematically silenced, forced into a non-conversation. This has had devastating effects on the Muslim discourse which has been stripped of any political power, reduced to respectability politics and a crisis of leadership. The depoliticisation of the Muslim community has alienated the younger generations and has led to many of its members internalising Islamophobic stereotypes and engaging in self-surveillance.
That this environment of hate and othering spawned someone like Brenton Tarrant, nurturing his Islamophobia and aggression to the point that he deemed it his "duty" to raid two mosques and kill 50 innocent worshippers is by no means surprising. Tarrant is not an aberration, he's not an exception; he is an integral part of the collective "we" in New Zealand, Australia, and the "West" - just like the followers of Trumpism are part and parcel of modern-day America.
To argue the opposite is plain denialism and a cowardly flight into the white liberal sanctuary of the "third way" from the discomfort of reality. Ardern's words were uttered at a moment of vulnerability as an exaltation of what New Zealand is not and will never be. They signal that the majority is refusing and rejecting shame, the experience of which is key in the pursuit of restorative justice. Unlike pride and hate, the feeling of shame involves self-judgement; embracing it shows a willingness to be transformed by it. In the wake of the Christchurch attack, however, we have not seen the willingness or courage required to confront Islamophobia as an everyday practice and political policy.