A Model for the South Pacific or Skating on Thin Ice?

ABSTRACT

This essay examines the history of Islam in New Zealand from the nineteenth century and through to the close of the twentieth century . It is crucial to see beyond the clichéd images of Islam in New Zealand and explore the vivid ethnography of actual Muslim lives as the Muslim community can look back on a curious past in which adherents of Islam enjoyed more than just a narrow list of rigid doctrines, rituals and normative principles . The revival and renewal of Islam in New Zealand over the 1980s and 1990s is usually read as either a political device or as the manifestation of a global trend towards radicalised Islam . However, by concentrating on the biographies and histories of individual actors and agencies who lived this experience, one can perceive a more complicated array of factors . New Zealand Islam is characterised by a relatively high degree of liberalism and cosmopolitanism that might serve as a model for a more native South Pacific form of the faith.

Keywords: Islam, Muslims, New Zealand