Wearing a shrewd burgundy coat, cream pants and dark colored boots, Musa grins extensively as he welcomes his kindred Muslims outside the Al Noor mosque in Christchurch following Friday petitions.
"Salaam, sibling," he says to them, all embraces and handshakes. He is met with applauds on the shoulder and similarly wide smiles. "Salam alaikum, harmony arrive."
Individuals appear to know the man with the shimmering eyes and happy manner, even the furnished police who still watchman the mosque entryways, a consoling and cordial nearness a month after the assaults that stole 50 lives and changed endless others.
Be that as it may, Musa has been an individual from this network for not exactly a month.
Half a month prior life was altogether different. In those days he was Shay Kenny, a destitute medication junkie of 25 years who'd had more than the intermittent brush with the law.
"I thought Muslim was a country but I couldn't find it on a map," he said. "I feel like a dumbass saying that now, but that's the truth of it."
It was while he was a guest at a funeral for one of the victims that he "pretty much got a punch in the heart from Allah, saying 'come be a part of this community'".
He converted, took on his new name and is trying to turn his life around.
"I have never felt so much love and peace in my life," he said. "The Muslim community are all about helping people and I've just had plenty of support.""They are my brothers and sisters, my new family."
Life has been hard for Musa. His first cigarette as a 7-year-old in Motueka drove him to medications, and his high school years were spent in child care in Hamilton before he moved out at 16.
The next decade or so was a strong blend of business angling, whitebaiting, wedded life in Westport and "growing a great deal of cannabis on the West Coast", just as an undesirable discourtesy for the law. On one event he pursued a cop with a hatchet, he said.
He has lived in Christchurch for the most recent year, 10 months of which he spent destitute, asking in a shop entryway on Hereford St.
"I had a solid sleeping pad and a solid cushion," he said.
"It gets settled sooner or later. I had a little sign saying, 'Any assistance, ravenous and destitute, much obliged. GB – god favor'."
At the point when the assaults occurred on March 15 he was remaining at his sister's home close Linwood. His child and mom live close to the mosque there, and he dashed around to check they were sheltered
He and his family later took blossoms to the scene, and two days after the assault he held a standard outside Burger King on Linwood Ave to demonstrate his help for the Muslim people group, the message basic: "We're all the equivalent within".
"I didn't know what to say, but it just came to me," Musa said. "I think that there in itself has changed my life.
Elliot Dawson, a survivor of the shootings, came to join him at the end of the first day.
"He saw me and came over and gave me a hug. I think he was the first Muslim I had ever met."Musa said he continued his roadside vigil day after day, eight hours at a time. At the end of one he heard a voice, a "hey, brother".
It was three Australian Muslims, offering him a beverage and chocolates. The trio had gone through the day going to memorial services of the people in question, in a steady progression after another, and had seen regardless him out, wielding his message of harmony.
They took him to the exploited people's inside at Hagley Park, offered him an immense feast and informed others regarding what he had done.
The next day he was welcome to go to one of the memorial services – he trusts it was for Sayyad Milne, a 14-year-old Cashmere High School understudy killed at the Al Noor mosque.
It was by then, he stated, he discovered Islam.
"I simply recollect my heart beating and Allah practically let me know, 'come be a piece of it'.
"Straight away I asked a few colleagues, 'would i be able to turn into a Muslim?' I could barely handle it – they were stating 'come be a piece of this'."
It was there, at Linwood Cemetery, that he made his promise to Allah, the shahada.
"That transformed myself from that second, directly there. I was a medication fanatic for a long time, yet from that point on the desire to do needles and the various medications was no more.
The days that even from a pessimistic standpoint saw him utilizing around 150 needles seven days are presently gone, he says, his time currently regularly spent at the Al Noor mosque."I've had a little oversight since, yet I made up and apologized to the individual I have to."
He is likewise off the lanes, remaining in crisis convenience in Sydenham.
"Since getting to be Muslim I swore I'd never go through one more night on the solid sleeping cushion or pad," he said. "I've strolled around throughout the night so I wouldn't rest in the city."
On Friday Musa was wearing his new garments, purchased from the operation shop at the City Mission, all prepared for a prospective employee meeting, his once straggly whiskers perfectly cut.
He is as yet becoming acclimated to wearing the robes of his religion and needs to think hard when endeavoring to recall Al Fātihah, the principal section of the Koran, a petition for direction and leniency, yet he needs this to be another begin throughout everyday life.
Musa says he is intensely mindful of the doubt some may have for him.
"Being homeless and a new Muslim, I didn't want people to think I am trying to scam them, so I have refused people offering me help.
"I don't want the stigma of being someone trying to take advantage of the situation. My heart is in it fully, and I just want to learn about the Islamic culture."I want to portray a complete different way of living. It has changed my life. Am I better person? Unbelievably, yes."
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