Photo: Penguin Random House
When writer (and former RNZ journalist) Mohamed Hassan moved to New Zealand from Egypt at eight years old, people mostly just asked him about pyramids and pharaohs.
That changed after September 11 2001, when there was a "very marked shift" in the experience of children from immigrant backgrounds, he tells Kathryn Ryan.
"Suddenly you were being asked questions by your teachers, by your peers. People were looking at you in a strange way. People were looking at your mother in a strange way - my mum wears the hijab and that was suddenly something I was aware of.
"For my generation, there's definitely a pre-9/11 world and a post-9/11 world, and in that post-9/11 you're constantly aware of who you are and what it means to be a Muslim, what it means to be someone named 'Mohamed'."
In his new essay collection, How to be a Bad Muslim, Hassan challenges the narrative that connecting with his faith can be somehow 'bad' and explores immigration, grief, xenophobia and love.
Read an edited extract from How to be a Bad Muslim here
The book's title - borrowed from one of the essays - is a little bit provocative but also asks a sincere question, Hassan says.
"When you grow up in a Muslim community you're taught all these about what it means to be a 'good' Muslim - you pray, you fast, you believe in God, you read the Koran...
"All of the things you thought made you a 'good' Muslim in your own community - the way your parents raised you - suddenly made you a 'bad' Muslim, a 'dangerous' Muslim, a 'suspicious' Muslim in the eyes of your society and the world at large."
Hassan says that suddenly becoming a figure of suspicion because of his ethnicity made him feel angry, frustrated and lonely at times and he and his Muslim friends sometimes coped by joking around.
"Humour is a great way of dealing with [stigma]. You develop a dark sense of humour about these things. You make jokes when you're messaging people about what you can and can't say and who [might] be listening… all of these things might seem really dark but they're just ways to relieve pressure and make light of a situation.
"If I meet any Muslim who grew up in a western country anywhere in the world, we instantly have this understanding about what that experience was like."
In How to be a Bad Muslim, Hassan takes a journalistic perspective on how the internet can be a harbour and a platform for dangerous ideas.
"It does become kind of a dizzying story, how these things end up connecting to each other. How the mosque shooter in Christchurch is connected to this YouTube celebrity and how this internet culture that we're all a part of, and all exist in, ends up weaving threads between people and making young men feel less alone… [but] in a place where their dangerous or unhealthy ideas aren't being challenged."
Hassan found writing in essay format allowed him to be freer with his storytelling.
"With personal essays, there kind of are no rules. It allowed me to meander when I wanted to and use extended metaphors, which I hope I don't labour too much.
"You draw on memories and pop culture references, you get poetic sometimes and sometimes you get emotional and dark. Weaving all these things together hopefully creates an easy way to take people on a journey to somewhere that might be a little bit tough to talk about in direct language."
After travelling the world the last couple of years, Hassan says he can now see how both his Kiwi upbringing and his Muslim community have shaped his identity.
"I straddled two different worlds at times but that doesn't detract from who I am or my identity or my sense of home, but it adds to it. It allows me to be able to connect.
"[My experience] has made me more open and more embracing of the world and ideas and conflicts and different realities and different truths."
How to be a Bad Muslim isn't just Hassan's personal story, though. Woven through the essays are stories of other Muslim people coming into their own "in impressive and beautiful ways".
"We're seeing now a generation of very resilient, very proud and very ambitious young Muslims that are eager to prove themselves in all aspects of society, eager to prove their place in society… and what it means for them to be an individual navigating the world."
When he left Auckland, Hassan said he did so with "a really heavy heart" he'd found his tribe in the arts community.
"Every time I come back to Auckland, or New Zealand in general, I'm incredibly amazed at just how rich the arts scene is and how supportive and tightly knit it is and just how many amazing things are happening … there's always new people that are emerging with very fresh ideas."
Related:
Listen to Public Enemy - Mohamed Hassan's award-winning RNZ series about how Muslim communities are affected by counter-terrorism policies, war and xenophobia.
Listen to Mohamed Hassan on Saturday Morning
