That's The Spirit w/ Peter Lineham: Rāhina September 21st, 2026

So the interesting thing is that ac- there's no clear number of a total number of mosques in New Zealand, um, partly because there are several rival Islamic groups.

Um, uh, the main ones, of course, are the normal, um, Sunni mosques, and there's a long list of them that's available.

But, um, there's a, there's a number of other from the smaller Muslim groups, and in particular, um, Ahmediyya, which is the group which is n- not recognized as orthodox at all, um, by the, um, other Muslims, claims to have the largest mosque in the country, um, over in Manurewa.

Uh, so there's a whole variety of these.

What intrigues me is where they're found.

Now, it probably isn't a great surprise to you, but they're essentially found in the poorer parts, especially of Auckland.

So you've got-

Hmm

... um, it, all across the south of Auckland and the west of Auckland, but in terms of central and eastern Auckland, virtually nothing.

Now, that's intriguing.

And the further south you go, the fewer, uh, the harder it is to find mosques.

Interesting.

Interesting.

I don't know.

I mean-

Right

...

I, I, I don't know if, uh, the, the, I guess it is a little bit of a, a little bit unsurprising.

Uh, i- uh, is, do we think the reason is because of, like, uh, uh, the Islamic population is primarily, uh, uh, immigrants, maybe? Is that-

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Not, not just immigrants, but, um, Indian and Pakistani immigrants mostly, although there are, you know, a number from Middle East countries, of course.

But the big increase in population from, from Muslims has been from Pakistan and quite a lot from India, because despite the fact that India and Pakistan were divided along religious lines, there still were a lot of, um, uh, Muslims left in India, but they had good reason to want to get out of India as it's become increasingly Hindu focused.

So the very first, um, attempts at a Muslim organization were back in 1950, but I've traced Muslims right back into the 1860s, um, and this comes of those New Zealand landowners who had connections with India.