Abstract:
What does decolonising white feminism really mean inAotearoa/New Zealand? How can our Muslim communities
contribute to this project, and to what extent is Aotearoa/New Zealand ‘ready’ to confront the experiences of
‘othering’ and marginalisation that so many Muslim women absorb on a daily basis? This interview with Anjum
Rahman provides first-hand insight into these issues, as well as an exacting and uncompromising analysis, as
told through Anjum’s irrepressible political life story of triumph and struggle, of what decolonising white
feminism in this country might look like. The interview (conducted by Kirsten Locke) took place in December
2019 at the Shama Ethnic Women’s Trust centre in Hamilton, an organisation that Anjum has been involved in at a
governance level and is currently managing a project hosted by this organisation. Shama, as it is commonly known,
is a charitable trust that offers holistic and comprehensive support to ethnic minority women in the Hamilton area
through workshops, individual and community support, and advocacy at all levels for ethnic women who may
also be recent migrants. From this most appropriate of settings, the following interview traverses Anjum’s views
on contemporary feminism in Aotearoa/New Zealand.