Stage 5: Acceptance

And finally, hopefully, acceptance. Sheikh Gamal Fouda, the imam of Al Noor mosque, traveled the world offering a message of peace. But he found his own inner peace here at home.

It wasn't until November that Sheikh Gamal Fouda really came to terms with what happened to his small community.

The imam of Al Noor Mosque spent the weeks and months after the attack travelling around the country and the world, at the invitation of governments, kings and religious institutions wanting to give a platform for the victims of Christchurch.

He was speaking at the United Nations, at Islamophobia forums in the US, at the royal court of Saudi Arabia. What he wasn't doing was dealing with his own trauma.

When he finally got a chance to return home to his wife and daughters, away from the politicians and media, the emotions came flooding to the surface.

"I woke up one day and I started to process what happened and realised that yes, there was a terror attack in our mosque, and lots of people were killed. I couldn't comprehend it."

Sheikh Gamal was in the middle of giving his weekly sermon on Friday March 15, when a stranger entered his mosque and started shooting.

He watched as the people he had intimately known and served for 17 years were killed.

"We used to think that New Zealand is one of the safest places in the world, and for a while I thought that this is no longer a safe place."

Leaning on his faith and prayer for guidance and stability, he also began seeing a psychologist over the last few months to help process and unpack the traumatic events he witnessed, and the pressure it heaved onto him as a community leader.

He admits to never having heard terms like 'white nationalism' and 'white supremacy' before the attack. It was strange to him, and he didn't understand where their ideology came from. What he did understand was the Islamophobia targeting Muslims, and the toxic hatred that had led to the horrendous act of violence that struck his community.

"I put these people in the same basket as Al Qaeda and ISIS and the Taliban, because terrorists are terrorists, whether they're using Islam or using Christianity or anything else. But I think religions must be part of the solution, not part of the problem."

Just one week later, he stood defiantly on a podium in the middle of Hagley Park, across the road from his cordoned mosque where forensic examinations were still underway, and gave a sermon to the world.

"We are determined to love one another and to support each other. This evil ideology of white supremacy did not strike us first, yet it has struck us hardest," he said on March 22…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details