Dr Aliya Danzeisen Photo: Supplied
A week out from the fifth anniversary of the Christchurch mosque terror attack, a notable spokesperson in the New Zealand community reflects on the gains made for Muslims here, and ongoing barriers and prejudice.
Lawyer, linguist and teacher Aliya Danzeisen converted to Islam as an adult in 2001, four months before 9/11.
Today, she is the national coordinator and spokesperson for the Islamic Women's Council, and a standard bearer for the contribution Muslim women are making in New Zealand. Her work in the community has included preparing the Islamic Women's Council's response to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Christchurch mosque attacks.
Perceptions of Muslim women were often unsophisticated and limited, Danzeisen said.
"When people talk about New Zealand being super-diverse, the Muslim community is the super-diverse community inside the super-diverse nation, and they don't understand that.
"We're coming from over 80 countries - inside of those countries we have diversity - so often they'll go 'oh, all Muslim women do this', but actually that might not be the food we eat, it might not be the language we speak, it might not be the way we dress, and so we're very, very diverse.
"Also, there is what's called gendered Islamophobia, which is a bias that has been developed for Muslim women, that we're suppressed, that we don't speak for our own selves, that we don't work, that we aren't active - and I can put out hundreds and hundreds and thousands of women in New Zealand that are very, very active, very vocal, very involved, but there's a perception that we're not."
A common misconception is that all Muslim women wear headscarves, but it is a personal choice for each woman to make.
"There are many, many people walking around that you wouldn't know they were Muslim unless they told you," Danzeisen said.
The misconceptions come from lack of knowledge, but also probably stem from "a sustained level of focus on the Muslim community and a lot of tropes that we're different", she said.
Both 9/11 and the subsequent War on Terrorism created a different dynamic in the way Muslims were seen, she said.
"Before that, Muslims were more likely to be perceived as migrants with different dress styles who had come from another country."
Danzeisen herself is well travelled. She grew up in a small community in mid-west USA, a farm girl from a Christian family. She converted to Islam in 2001 as an adult after a 13-year journey exploring her beliefs and then immigrated to New Zealand five years later.
She has a doctorate of law from the United States, and a Master of Laws from the University of Waikato: "Each of them I had a different focus, in the US I focused on more general law but litigation - and then because I was [working in] large corporate bankruptcies in the States, then when I came here I did an international cross of international bankruptcies.
"The reason I went to law school was human rights ... I studied human rights as part of my law degree."
After converting, she did not immediately choose to wear a headscarf. She found herself at times exposed to conversations about Muslims, without those involved realising she herself was Muslim.
Many were "extremely racist, extremely biased, not open. They professionally wouldn't have said it, but they were saying it in rooms that they were comfortable".
"It makes me sad to think of anyone who was [8 years old] or born after 9/11 - they don't remember anything else in our community, they don't know that there was a different way that people perceived Muslims."
Having seen that change in perceptions in the West, Danzeisen said she was also hopeful that could change for the better.
"Hopefully we'll grab that back in the next decade."
A world 'on the cusp"
Danzeisen's decision to move to New Zealand, arriving in 2006, was prompted by the 2004 US presidential election, won by Republican George W Bush.
She had served as a volunteer legal adviser in Florida, briefing and training local electoral staff about obligations and practices to ensure those with the right to vote got to vote. However, after the election she was discouraged by how the access to vote played out in practice, across the different communities in the States.
"There were people who didn't get access to vote - in Florida, and I met some of them myself, and I really believe in democracy, and I was committed to it."
Seeing those discrepancies affect different communities in different ways was jarring, she said.
While she did not regret her decision to shift to New Zealand, she was still concerned about the state of democracy in the US now.
"I've always held hope in the judicial system of the US, and it takes time. So you've been seeing it work, but at the same time we all see what's going on."
"You have to value democracy, you have to invest in it, you have to make sure that everybody is treated equally and fairly and that there isn't corruption in there.
"And I would say that what we're seeing is years of corruption in systems, and we're at a cusp...
"We're at a cusp not just in the US, I'm talking world-wide we're at a cusp - is democracy going to hold or are we going to have different systems? And are we going to be better off? It's really an important election."
