Advocate’s ongoing fight: ‘We don’t want what happened to us to happen to any other community’
Monday, 5 June 2023
When Dr Maysoon Salama arrived in New Zealand with her husband and young family 30 years ago, she felt like an alien as she wore her hijab in the community.
It is the work she has done since, building bridges between Muslims and other New Zealanders, that has seen her recognised in this year’s King’s Birthday Honours, being named an Honorary Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to the Muslim community and education.
“I didn’t expect it and I am really grateful. It is very humbling and uplifting,” Salama said of her honour.
“But my family was not surprised. They have been very supportive.”
Born in Palestine and raised in Kuwait, Salama completed a PhD in the United States before moving to Christchurch in the 1990s.
She co-founded of the National Islamic Sisterhood Association in 2000, and was chairperson of the Islamic Women’s Council of New Zealand from 2012 to 2020.
She co-founded and runs the non-profit An-Nur preschools in Christchurch and Dunedin, where the children speak mostly English but also learn some Arabic and te reo. They were New Zealand’s first Muslim preschools.
Salama has also prepared educational resources for primary schools, and supported international students from the Arabian peninsula studying in Christchurch.
The preschools do not seclude the children, but teach them Islamic values and culture, she said.
“With all the discrimination we were facing, it was a solution for us to have our owns preschools.
“I’ve always loved education, it is an essential tool for success. We follow the Government curriculum, plus we add something Islamic. We have children of all colours and from all walks of life.”
The 2019 terror attack in Christchurch took the life of Salama’s elder son, Ata Mohammad Ata Elayyan, a businessman, software developer and sportsman who was married with young daughter. It also left Salama’s husband badly injured.
Once a confident public speaker, she found the grief and trauma affected her ability to remember her words.
Despite this, she has stepped into the role of spokesperson for her community. There were “layers and layers of impact” on the affected families, and some of the survivors were just starting to talk about what they witnessed, she said.
At the sentencing of the terrorist in 2020, she told him in court: “You thought you could break us, but you failed miserably.”
Salama was appointed to the Kāpuia Ministerial Advisory Group and the Collective Impact Board for the royal commission of inquiry into the mosque attacks.
Since 2021, she has been on the board advising the Government on implementing the commission’s recommendations, and addressed the 2022 United Nations Congress of Victims of Terrorism.
She has co-written children’s books, including Aya and the Butterfly, on dealing with loss and grief, making them freely available online with a companion teaching resource.
Salama’s inspiration for writing the books was her granddaughter Aya, now aged 5, who moved to Jordan with her mother after her father was murdered in the terror attack.
Salama said New Zealand had become a lot more open to foreign migrants since she and her family arrived in the country, but many still experience discrimination, distrust and prejudice.
She believed the terror attack changed the way Muslims were seen, and said she was touched at the outpouring of support and condolences in the aftermath.
But there were worrying signs worldwide, and working to stop what happened in Christchurch happening anywhere again was essential, she said.
“There is still discrimination and hate speech and hate crimes. We don’t want what happened to us to happen to any other community.”