Al Noor Mosque
March 19, 2019
By NZB3
Trying to get my head around the Ground Zero for this month’s terror attack in Christchurch. This happened at Al Noor Mosque which I translate to Mosque of The Light.
Built by MAC (Muslim Association of Canterbury) in 1985 and for 15 years the most southern mosque in the world. The Muslim community in Canterbury is concentrated in Christchurch with Al Noor the major centre. The initial builder community was South Asian, coming to New Zealand in small numbers from 1960s and 70s.
Getting more Hard Core?
However, in the 1990s a new ethnic group came along to become predominant causing some transitional friction. National 4.0 boosted New Zealand’s refugee intake leading to traumatised Arab and Somali people¹ holding sway in this community who held more hard-core and radical Islamic visions than the more mild Asians they displaced. At the same time (2003,) the Muslim leaders were reaching out to convert New Zealanders to their faith which included a particular initiative toward Maoris.²
Gamal Al Banna, Al Noor’s Top Guy
Gamal Mokhtar Mohamed Ali Fouda (aka Gamal Al Banna) became Imam, the top man or, pastor, to Al Noor in 2014 and remains so to this day. As befitting the new congregation, he is an Egyptian. Al Banna’s background is as a religious bureaucrat for the Egyptian State within the non-secular Ministry in control of some $40 billion in assets. In Egypt community assets like, I don’t know, playgrounds and churches and parks etc are presided over by religio-statist clerics whereas in New Zealand we would have an Incorporated Society or Trust formed by the people and simply rubber stamped legally. Al Banna was assigned by Sharia Egypt to New Zealand in 2003. Since then Al Banna has become a practising primary school teacher, his registration lapsing only a couple of years back. He seems to have been sent as a support guy for the new traumatised Middle-Eastern/African majority of Cantab Muslims. It may be he was sent to clean house after the 2003-2014 tensions. His public message keeps urging the public that Islam is a religion of peace and not to mistake it for the misdeeds of the few.
Back in 2014
News came out during Al Banna’s first year, 2014, that the years leading up had been tainted with some extremism. That was 5 years back and perhaps over and done with, perhaps with thanks to Al Banna. But here are some examples of that prior history of extremism…
Havard told his parents it was during his time at the Christchurch mosque that he first encountered radical Islam.
“When he moved into the mosque he realised what they were trying to convert people to. That’s when he left and went to Dunedin. He didn’t agree with what they were teaching,” they said.- ABC, June 2014
This story was also reported in New Zealand in The Press as Drone victims ‘radicalised’ at mosque. Convert Muslims, Australian Christopher Havard and Kiwi/Aussie Daryl Jones, met at the Christchurch mosque while it was run by Al Banna’s predecessor, Hisham el Zeiny. The above claims by family are contradicted by commentators, the mosque community, and Police. The al Qaeda-linked men were both killed by the Yanks in a drone strike in Nov 2013 in Yemen. Of course grieving parents notoriously look for someone or something to blame beyond themselves. And just because two terrorists used Christchurch facilities as they were passing through does not implicate anyone beyond themselves.
Aotearoa Muslim is proud to support Isis
Aaron Tahuhu, a fundamentalist Muslim, says he is one of more than a dozen people in Christchurch who have similar beliefs.- Stuff, Nov 2014
Is this all bluster or is Aaron for real? He says our public have nothing to fear from his little cell yet has close contacts with New Zealand’s enemies in the Middle East.
Prime Minister John Key this week said up to 80 Kiwis were being monitored over their links to Islamic State, which has called for lone wolf-style terrorist attacks on Western targets…Some were fighting in Syria and an unknown number, from a watch list of up to 40, wanted to take up arms there.- ibid
“About two years ago, disillusioned with Christianity, he converted to Islam at the Christchurch mosque on Deans Ave,” Stuff reports. Like Christopher Havard above, Tahuhu has a history of offending. In Havard’s case, it was the judicial penalty of Community Service that may have first introduced him to the mosque where he served it.
Summing Up
Nothing delved into here implicates the Christchurch Mosque community at all. Considering they’ve had to support each other through some very volatile transitions to a new country followed by the Quake it seems to me that they’re ahead of the game when it comes to support and peace. I knew before I started researching the above that nothing I could find would ever justify last week’s massacre.
Because such things as the above are not being talked about though I wanted to find out for myself and share the results. It’s a very unthinking and desperate standard to blame this mosque for being open to misuse by criminals, twits, or killers. Just because a person like that uses a library or the internet or guns or telephones doesn’t taint those things either. I hope people remember that when they come for our Free Speech and our guns as we fear The State is warming itself up to do in the impending blow-back to the Tarrant rampage.
—
Note: “The 2006 census recorded 37,000 Muslims in total”
Note: the 2013 census recorded that “the Muslim community in Canterbury is concentrated in Christchurch…over 3,000 people living here who practice the Islamic faith.”
2 ref. Al Noor Mosque, Christchurch; wiki
Image ref. Aaron Tahuhu, fundamentalist Muslim; KIRK HARGREAVES photo; Stuff 2014
Image ref. Beautiful Mosques Pictures
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