The Crescent Moon: The Asian Face of Islam in New Zealand.

• Author: Van Der Krogt, Christopher
• Position: Book review

THE CRESCENT MOON: The Asian Face of Islam in New Zealand

Editor: Adrienne Jensen, with photographs by Ans Westra

Published by: Asia New Zealand Foundation, Wellington, 2009, 95pp, $45.

There have been small numbers of Muslims in New Zealand since the early Chinese gold miners, but the numbers have grown exponentially over the past three decades--from fewer than 2000 to probably at least 40,000. Many contributors to this volume have had to struggle against ignorance and stereotypes concerning their religion: hence the truisms about misrepresentation in the media, about Islam as not just a religion but a way of life, and about its being the least understood religion. In a society largely ignorant of its own religious heritage and of the significance of religion in the wider world, many Christians and other religious believers could make the same complaint.

In fact, this is not a book about Islam or even the Islamic community in New Zealand so much as a series of portraits of people who are Muslims. There is no systematic treatment of Islam or its history (beyond the briefest sketch by Anna Gade by way of introduction) or of the demography or organisation of New Zealand Muslims. The book consists of transcribed and pictorial profiles of individuals from around the country, many of whom do, however, speak about their beliefs or the Islamic and other organisations to which they contribute. Since the profiles are expressed in the first person, the role of Adrienne Jensen was evidently not so much to write as to edit the contributors' spoken words into written English.

Despite its sub-title, the book demonstrates that Islam does not have a single Asian face in New Zealand: the 36 featured individuals (often accompanied by friends or family) constitute but a tiny sample of a diverse population of Muslims embracing over 40 nationalities. Moreover, the crescent moon of the title is a relatively recent symbol for Islam, is not particularly Asian, and is not accepted by all Muslims.

The book was commissioned by the Asia New Zealand Foundation, which would explain its rather arbitrary focus on 'Asian' Muslims (several of whom quite rightly insist on their claim to be New Zealanders). As Shadiya Ibrahim observes, 'When you say Asian it doesn't mean anything, because a third of the world's population is Asian'. Indeed, it would be difficult to demonstrate that Indian and Afghan Muslims share a common identity with Japanese or Indonesian Muslims that does...