The Guest House

Mohamed Hassan works through the five stages of grief felt by Muslim New Zealanders after the March 15 attacks. Stage one is denial; he talks to Hassan Raslan, who spent three days helping with the burials.

"This being human is a guest house, every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor." - Rumi

It is a normal part of trauma to experience dissociation...

After denial comes anger. Guled Mire became a spokesperson for his community after the mosque attacks, but when he showed anger at the death of innocents, he found the tide shifting.

Guled Mire is a firecracker by nature, driven by an unyielding sense of justice. It often gets him into trouble.

After the March 15 Christchurch attacks, he suddenly found himself a voice for his broken community, sifting through his own emotions and fig...

After anger comes bargaining. 'If only we had taken better care of our Muslim neighbours'. But we hadn't and many Māori stepped up, drawing on their own experience of exclusion.

Some of the most remarkable and deliberate responses to the Christchurch attacks stemmed from Māori culture. In the week following March 15, not a day would pass without a high school, a community group or even a chapter of a local gang showing up outside th...

After bargaining, the depression. It was felt by Muslims even half a world away, who experienced the 'vicarious trauma' and thought maybe they were right to worry about their safety after all.

This year a study out of Sussex University referenced the term 'vicarious trauma' to describe how Muslims react to events that happen in different parts of the world.

Because of a shared sense of community, a brotherhood, Muslims oft...

And finally, hopefully, acceptance. Sheikh Gamal Fouda, the imam of Al Noor mosque, traveled the world offering a message of peace. But he found his own inner peace here at home.

It wasn't until November that Sheikh Gamal Fouda really came to terms with what happened to his small community.

The imam of Al Noor Mosque spent the weeks and months after the attack travelling around the country and the world, at the invitation of gov...