By LACHLAN MOORHEAD
ASKED if there’s anything else she’d like to say, Naureen Choudhry smiles and answers matter-of-factly.
“I love Australia.”
After 10 years, the Pakistani mother of two will next week officially become an Australian citizen at a special ceremony at the Casey Council chambers.
While her life has seen the Casey Multi-faith Secretary traverse the globe and call several different cities her home, it is in Australia that the Narre Warren resident finds her strongest connection.
Naureen, a practising Muslim, is extremely passionate about interfaith movements and is an active member of the Faith Communities Councils of Victoria (FCCV), and the Jewish Christian Muslim Association (JCMA).
For the latter she travels to schools and speaks to students about her religion, along with representatives of the Christian and Jewish faiths.
“I feel privileged to speak to school students at a grassroots level and offer them an opportunity to ask questions,” Naureen said.
“It’s an excellent program where I think you can literally see barriers being broken down.
“The floor is open to the students … there’s no set agenda, they ask the questions, that’s what makes the agenda.”
As a child Naureen grew up with her family in Kuwait and left the country just before Iraq invaded.
But conflict never seemed far away.
“I didn’t really realise the impact of war but I did understand that it meant a lot of people dying and it wasn’t a good thing, but as such we didn’t see first-hand what was going on,” she said.
“My parents took it in a very calm way …
“The room would shake and my mum would say, oh it looks like another bomb has been dropped.”
Naureen and her family lived for a time in Canada before moving to New Jersey, USA.
She was driving to work at the time when the first reports of the 9/11 terrorist attacks came through her car radio.
“Within half an hour we had realised what had just happened and my legs were literally shaking and I took leave that day,” she said.
“I went home and I couldn’t come back the next day either.
“I was in shock, total shock. And on the third day when I did come back the first reaction was people hugged me – I was the only Muslim worker in the company.”
Now living in Victoria’s City of Casey, where Numan Haider was last year fatally shot after attacking police, and where a number of teenagers were arrested in relation to a foiled Anzac Day terror plot in April, Naureen has more experience than most in spreading a message of unity and educating the community about Islam.
This is a role Naureen does not take lightly, and one she pays the utmost respect to.
“We need to keep communicating – the dialogue is extremely important,” she said.
“I do feel that there are a lot of people who have closed the doors on this dialogue, they want to only hear what they want to hear.
“My message to those people is, talk to a Muslim – no person wearing a hijab will hesitate to explain why she chooses to wear a hijab, if you ask.”
