Remember by telling stories in order to bring healing in the community.

As we are reaching the 4^th Sunday in Lent there is something that needs to be remembered as this season of reflection. Coming to terms with the past about whatever one did against one’s fellow citizens in the name of a particular ideology, is a step toward healing the wounds of the victims and it make it possible to forgive. That was the experience of some of the victims of the 15^th of March 2019.

Two years has passed, and during the trial last year the survivors shared their stories of pain, sorrow and inconsolable grief. Such was the experience of Sara Qasem whose father died at the Al Noor Mosque when she spoke about the last moments of her father’s life, saying: “I wonder if he was in pain, if he was frightened, and what his final thoughts were. And I wish more than anything in the world that I could have been there to hold his hand and tell him it would all be ok. But I could not do that”. At the end of her statement as she was crying, and looking at the killer, she said: “these tears are not for you”. Courage and pain brought alive the memories of losing her beloved father in the most cold, frantic manner which cannot be described by reasonable manners.

Another survivor Zekerija Tujan whose husband Hamimah battled for more than 40 days before succumbing to his injuries, spoke about the difficulties that she has when her small children wanted to know “why did he kill his baba?”  And she can see “the longing in her son’s eyes and he watches other boys holding hands, playing with their fathers, how could she, their mother console their aching hearts?” Her children loved their baba very much as they used to spend time together, jumping, cuddling, but now “their baba will not be here to celebrate their future successes – they will not have him to lead them by example”. Losing their father in a safe land, that is the irony of their maktoub –destin- when they left their own country for a better and safe life. Zekeriya’s children are not yet ready to understand and make sense of all their questions, but the family took great consolation from her last statement: (when she referred to the killer) “but your heinous acts brought thousands of New Zelanders together in solidarity with us. I feel like you are the victim here – we are the survivors”.

Finally, the pain and grief of Maysoon Salama, mother of Muhammad Ata Elayyan expressed her broken heart as a mother and the feeling as “million times similar to the pain of labour again and again”. “She has constantly tried to imagine how her beloved son Ata felt at the moment of the attack”, she said, but she has more questions without answers: “how her son faced the shooter, what was in his mind when he realized he is departing this life to his last journey”. She continued saying to the killer: “you gave yourself the authority to take the souls of 51 innocent people, their only crime in your eyes is being Muslims”. Salama was brave enough to say what was lying in her wounded heart and spoke the truth, the only reason why in which the killer acted in that insane way was because they were Muslim.

However, they found the courage to keep going with life, the Muslim community thanks to the power of their faith. As Farid Ahmed said after losing his wife: “I could see my hope begin to glimmer again, pinprick in the darkness that cloaked me. It was slowly growing, restoring the brightness and colour to my world.”

Also, the experience of solidarity that the Muslim community immediately received on the day that NZ “lost its innocence”- from the top with the Prime Minister to the bottom with their neighbours who comforted the survivors with their presence and sharing their sorrow and pain- helped some of them to “deflate their fear like a balloon”. That was the case of Dr Mazharuddin Syed Ahmed who hid, in the storeroom as the terror attack unfolded at the Linwood Islamic Centre and he survived. Now he is designing a course in which he is using aroha to dismantle hate in Aotearoa. He got the inspiration from the love, support, empathy given by ordinary people around the community. So, he started to document “100 acts of kindness” toward his community from the wall of flowers, Western women wearing the hijab, vigils, to kapa haka. etc. All these expressions of kindness were material which gave him a new meaning, a purpose to design a course for the Ara Institute of Canterbury (where he is and architecture lecturer with a background in designing educational courses). So, for him the most important thing is to respond to hate with aroha. He thinks that it is about how hate speech and discrimination are grasped and addressed by “transforming it rather than challenging it””.

It is in this transformation that we find new meanings to our grief and sorrow and you will not let sorrow pull you down. At the same time, you will allow faith in life and trust in human kindness, empathy, and compassion to be the source of growth toward safety and hope.

Audio of selected readings and reflections

Audio of the complete service