Research

We ask ourselves if our employers would accommodate this and not restrict.

During Diwali, dashain is 7 days, etc, we get don’t get day off. So we have to take children from school or we have to take annual leave. But we have so many people working in one [place of work], that they won’t give us all the day off, so our people have to work on important religious days. So we have to celebrate our special days on weekend, which is not nice and doesn’t feel right. This makes us feel like we don’t belong. Lakshmi puja and Bhai Tika and Vijaya dashmi are festivals we need to celebrate at home with our community.

There are 60-70 families, Hindus are few, some Buddhist. What will be for my children, for the old people – for them, the cultural programmes, prayer, they like that. To do that, we don’t have a hall. We are doing our events at people’s houses. If there are too many people, issues with toilet, bathrooms, the neighbours might complain. It would be good to have a hall. We’re managing now, but for our children, how will we motivate the children. [expressed fear that the children will lose their culture]

Sometimes growing a beard or leaving for prayer, would feel included if that could be accommodated by an employer.

Muslim neighbours came 2 years before me; the hijab was being pulled off by girls in the school and being asked to go back to the country. The sad part is that the school management still thinks it was not a problem and never addressed the issues as if the girls are fine to be treated in such a manner. If they were Pakeha, the school will never let it go.

In Greymouth, I was going to the Chinese takeaways, and heard a person saying about a woman in veil, “oh there’s a bomb…maybe she’s a male” and this guy went outside to check if she was male or female.

It was not accepted [hijab]. Our mum was not able to get a job for quite some time because she wore a hijab, and at work she was told to take off her hijab.

Some [Muslim] girls get harassed when walking alone. But that girl had very extremist views, and I had someone to back me up. I went to my class and asked, “does everyone think I’m scary and a terrorist and going to blow things up?” I was crying.

If I go to synagogue with [husband], it’s fine with members [that I am there], but I feel like I am on the outer. It’s like being on the Marae -- I feel like “other.”

Because I’m Muslim, even though I don’t wear a hijab I am a practising Muslim, and food is a problem. When I ask for halal, it seems like I’m just trouble.

I’ve stopped asking for it, I just don’t eat. I go to work functions, if the vegetarian food is finished, then I don’t eat, I keep quiet. I may pay $20 for the event but don’t have the same opportunity [to eat food].

I’m white middle class, I’m always conscious of trying not to put a foot wrong at synagogue or mosque or marae. You have to get over yourself I suppose. It’s always really good when someone sees you [trying] at synagogue and reaches out.
We don’t drink tea, coffee and alcohol and we would go to family functions and feel excluded. On both parents' sides of the families I felt excluded as the families liked to party and were drinking.

Religious habits dictate a different lifestyle.

Once they (baptised Bhutanese) are in the church, they are not allowed to come to festivals, language classes, etc, and if they come they are suspended from our church.

First is these churches target our vulnerable people and get hold of them and pull them into church. This church seems to know who is target person. They have a good system to attack the vulnerable:

- Invite and give you dinner at their home
- Take you to town and show your around
- Give you small things - (used) clothes, vouchers, food
- Take them to church one Sunday
- Ask Why you don’t want to be Christian. They get ‘angry’ if we refuse
- Baptise them even if they don’t know what that means

Conversion to Christianity - Christian churches target the most vulnerable of our community and go to them and convert them and baptise them. The churches don’t know anything about us or our background. At the time they were baptised, those vulnerable people don’t even know what’s happening but they are promised things like laptop, old clothes, day out with picnic, and then they are baptised and they don’t even know what that means.

“Jewing a person down” is used here. [Our location] is very white, middle class, very churchy. Other refugee groups come, escape persecution from their own country, get swamped by church people, and end up converting so they can access support.

A shopkeeper has had people in his shop yelling at him. We have had people in the practice being accused of being stingy, trying to steal from people. [Jewish related]

The community don’t feel like they belong as a Jewish community. A massive amount of anti-Semitism.

I don’t want to paint myself as a victim. My husband is Jewish, I am Jewish by osmosis. The world has changed. A neo-Nazi put up a website saying, “Hitler should have finished the job” and put up ten Jewish homes on the website and ours was one of them. My kids have been called “fucking Jews.”

People would make jokes about ovens and gassing Jews. I have been called an unfinished Christian.

The marchers walk from the Church steps, walk down Trafalgar St, go past our practice and into the market. Not very many people, nobody really pays attention. There’s a very pro-Israel church and the protesters go and shout at it.

They have opened a chapter of the white supremacists in Nelson and they are being very vocal about it. It’s not great, but I feel like they won’t be targeting us, they will target the Muslim community. I will stand by the Muslim community.

I was born in Pakistan, I don’t feel I belong there, because of the way Christians are treated. When Pakistan came into being, there were 5 or 6% Christians, now are only 1.5%. They were made to convert, or killed, or made to leave.

Historically, my father’s family, being Protestant was genocide and I had to leave, my mother’s Indian, and there was also a genocide there.

When 9/11 hit us, things really changed. My wife wore hijab, people would spit in front of her. That sense of belonging disappeared. Going to small towns, the looks that you get, like you don’t belong here.