ABSTRACT
This chapter is about the what, the why and the how of the study of Islam and Islamic societies in a Western university. As I reflect on this topic I remember and honor Ahmed Ismail Bhikoo, the father of the Muslim communities in New Zealand. He was a Gujarati who migrated to Auckland around 1911. Later, he was followed by his sons, one of whom in 1939 established the first Muslim family unit to appear in a national census as resident in New Zealand. His descendants formed the core of a community that later was to welcome Muslims from many parts of the world, beginning with Bosnia and Albania. There was to be an increasing flow of Muslim refugees in the troubled years of the remainder of the twentieth century and the early twenty-first century, from the Balkans, the Middle East, South Asia and the Pacific.
