Dr Najib Lafraie, a former minister of state for foreign
affairs in the Afghani government in the 1990s, and now a
University of Otago lecturer, reflects on a book and an
exhibition at the Otago Museum, both featuring photographs
by Ans Westra. Photo by John Gibb.
A new exhibition at the Otago Museum is raising awareness
about New Zealand Muslims of Asian descent, Dr Najib Lafraie
says.
Dr Lafraie is a former minister of state for foreign affairs
in the Afghani government in the 1990s and is a lecturer in
the University of Otago politics department.
The museum exhibition, titled "The Crescent Moon: The Asian
Face of Islam in New Zealand", and a book of the same name
both feature photographs by a leading New Zealand
photographer, Ans Westra, of Muslims living in New Zealand.
An image of Dr Lafraie and his family appears among 37
photographs of Muslims in the book, which is also part of the
exhibition.
Twenty-six images from the book appear in the travelling
exhibition, which opened at the museum last Saturday and runs
until May 27.
The exhibition, brought together with support from Asia New
Zealand, aims to gives a face and voice to New Zealand's
Muslims of Asian descent through images by Ms Westra, an
immigrant from the Netherlands.
In the making of the book which led to this exhibition, Ms
Westra and writer Adrienne Jansen travelled throughout the
country meeting the people featured in the book, which also
includes interviews with them.
Dr Lafraie said that more than 35,000 Muslim people were now
living in New Zealand and had become a significant part of
the country's overall population.
They were a diverse group of people, from many different
countries and traditions, and the book and exhibition were
helping to raise public awareness of that diversity, he said.
Ms Westra had also played a key role in helping document
Maori culture during 50 years of significant political and
cultural challenges, exhibition organisers said.
She was named a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit
in 1998 for services to photography, and received an Arts
Foundation Icon Award in 2007.
john.gibb@odt.co.nz
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