It Was Clearly a Joke

Aliyaan (13) and his mum Masooma are Pakistani Muslims living in East Tāmaki. They discuss being a migrant kid, the March 15 terrorist attack, and how their lives have and haven't changed.

Watch the video version of the episode here

Masooma Mehdi arrived in Aotearoa at age 13 (the age her son Aliyaan is now) from Karachi, Pakistan. Aliyaan is in his first year of high school and joins this conversation as the podcast's youngest participant.

Both mother and son have experienced attending school as a Muslim kid in a country with very little visibility of Muslim New Zealanders. Though decades apart, their experiences have been similar, with ignorance and a lack of empathy around religious practices combining to ostracise and exclude them.

"I felt quite lonely, I remember... It used to be really depressing, and that's why I would just wait for school to finish, and just come back home," says Masooma.

Aliyaan agrees, "I know a lot of other Muslim kids have been called things like ... Just because I'm Muslim, doesn't mean I'm part of ISIS, because that means if you're Christian, you're part of KKK."

The white supremacist attack in Christchurch on March 15th deeply affected their whānau and community. This episode features mother and son delving deep into a reflection of how they first heard of the attack, their concerns for their community, and how they felt going to visit Al Noor Mosque themselves in the aftermath.

"We didn't know how New Zealand was going to react. Most of us Muslims, as soon as we heard about the attack... the very first thing we were like, we hope it is not a Muslim who has done it."

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details