Opinion
It’s not easy, being a Muslim in New Zealand. One minute, you’re the poster-boy for “They Are Us”, the next… well, we’ll get to that.
First, the fawning “Co-Exist”, rainbows’n’unicorns stuff.
Reza Abdul-Jabbar walks with one foot on the farm and one in the mosque – although he prefers to say it’s in the community.
When the Southland dairy farmer isn’t tending to his herd, he’s usually in town carrying out his duties as an imam […]
“Islam and farming fit together like a perfect glove. The values go hand in hand.”
Stuff
What values would they be? Ooh, this one’ll be a doozy.
But, let’s stick with the hand-holding, kumbaya, stuff for just a bit longer.
Country Calendar made a “deliberate choice” to do a story on a Muslim farmer after the Christchurch mosque attacks in March this year.
“We do stories about all sorts of people, we try and reflect the diversity of New Zealand,” said [producer Julian O’Brien]. “We felt that if we could find someone who was a good story, who had a good story to tell (and was) a farmer who had Islamic religious beliefs then we’d like to do that.”
Jabbar, as a practicing and prominent Muslim and a very successful dairy farmer, “exactly fitted the profile of what we’re looking for for Country Calendar.”
Stuff
What they’re looking for, apparently, is a slave-driving exploiter of migrant labour.
A Southland dairy farm and its owner, a well-known imam and farmer, have been ordered to pay $215,000 over the exploitation of three migrant workers from Indonesia.
Company Rural Practice has to pay $145,000 and its owner, Reza Abdul-Jabbar, $70,000 in penalties ordered by the Employment Relations Authority.
The employees came from Indonesia to work for the company on its Invercargill dairy farm and were subject to numerous employment breaches between 2017 and 2022.
Breaches included not paying workers minimum wage, nor their holidays, manipulating payslips, unlawful wage deductions and not keeping accurate wage records.
In December 2020, one of the workers raised the alarm through the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s (MBIE) contact line to complain about his pay, days off and that the employer refused to return his passport and identification.
Abdul-Jabbar was an imam at a mosque in Invercargill and the religious adviser to at least one of the three workers.
Oopsie.
This was no mere slip of the books, either.
Employment Relations Authority member Alastair Dumbleton said the manipulation of payslips showed the company actively tried to mislead statutory officials of Immigration New Zealand and the Labour Inspectorate.
“Abdul-Jabbar knowingly disregarded the law governing employment. He took advantage of [the migrant employees] because they were not from New Zealand.”
The breaches happened because of the farmer’s attitude of “disrespect for employment and immigration statutory rules and regulations”, Dumbleton said.
Otago Daily Times
But then, perhaps these are those “Islamic values” he was talking about? After all, Muhammad, was, according to Islam, the “highest ideal for human conduct”. One who should “be emulated both at social and spiritual levels”.
Well, given that Muhammad was also a slave-trader, I guess we’re seeing how that’s working out in practise.