Mosque terror attack ‘changed New Zealand forever’

New Zealand and its people have fundamentally changed since the Christchurch terrorist attacks, says Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, left, at Friday prayers in Christchurch as the country prepares for the first anniversary of the massacre. Picture: AP

The Christchurch terrorist attacks of March last year have “fundamentally changed’’ New Zealand, according to its Prime Minister.

Speaking nearly a year after the attack on two Christchurch mosques, Jacinda Ardern paused on Friday to reflect on what she described as one of her country’s “darkest days’’.

“A year on, I feel New Zealand and its people have fundamentally changed,” she said. “I can’t see how you could have an event like this and not.”

On March 15, 2019, Brenton Tarrant stormed Christchurch’s Al Noor Mosque and the Linwood Islamic Centre, killing 51 people as they performed Friday prayers.

The event stunned New Zealand and the world. Urgent gun ­reforms were initiated on the back of the attack and pressure was piled on tech companies to rein in online hate.

Ms Ardern said 60,907 prohibited firearms had been reclaimed in a nationwide gun buy-back that followed, one that borrowed heavily on the Howard-era reforms ­undertaken in the wake of the 1996 Port Arthur massacre.

The anniversary falls on Sunday but New Zealanders have been quietly commemorating the event with a series if services over the past few days.

Friday began with fajr, or dawn prayers, at the Al Noor Mosque. In the gloom, a handful of worshippers quietly murmured their incantations.

Sheik Hasan Rubel was among those in attendance. The 35-year-old was shot three times in the same mosque, twice in the pelvis and once in the foot.

“It could have happened anywhere,’’ he told The Weekend Australian, “but it was the reaction afterwards that made New Zealand a special place.’’

Normal lunchtime prayers at the Al Noor Mosque and Linwood were cancelled in favour of a combined prayer session in Christchurch’s Horncastle Arena, a medium-sized stadium a few ­minutes’ drive from the site of the attacks.

Metal barriers kept the world’s media at a respectful distance as the faithful trickled in.

The thousands of worshippers predicted by some did not materialised. Between the police, the bag checkers, the traffic marshals and the small army of PR flaks hired at the last moment by an overwhelmed community to manage the deluge of international journalists, there were nearly as many hangers-on as worshippers.

It was not indifference that kept the throng away.

Christchurch’s Muslim community is small and throughout this prolonged ordeal it has been its preference to keep its grief as low key as possible.

The plaques, the memorials, the merry-go round of ceremonies that have been foisted on the community have come from outsiders, a point acknowledged by Ms Ardern at a press conference earlier in the day. “They (the Muslim community) acknowledged it was something the New Zealand public may wish to mark and were very open to the idea of a memorial in order to allow other New Zealanders to reflect with them,” Ms Ardern said.

“That for me is emblematic of the generosity of the community.”

Inside the arena, the Imam of Al Noor Mosque, Gamal Fouda, led the congregation in prayer. Ms Ardern wore a hijab and looked on from a corporate box.

Goodness, said Mr Fouda, must be practised until it becomes a habit “and then becomes infectious … We need to stop infecting each other with coronavirus and start infecting each other with the spirit of goodness in the street.’’