Muslim students are used to comments and questions.
Their adherence to a faith which requires they pray five times a day, fast between sunrise and sunset for one month a year and, in the case of many women, wear head scarves when outside their homes, means they stand out from the crowd.
University of Otago Muslim Students Association president Mahmoud Amer, a final-year medical student, says the questions asked most frequently of him are why he prays so often, and why he fasts during the holy month of Ramadan.
The answer is simple, he said.
"Fasting, like prayer, is a way of showing your true relationship with God - a way of showing praise."
Muslims also field questions regularly about why they do not drink alcohol, avoid social occasions where alcohol is served, do not eat pork and eat only halal (lawful) meat which has been slaughtered in accordance with religious edicts, the students say.
Ahya Hasni and Afila Omar, both third-year medical students, are used to conversations about their head scarves.
They explain they wear them because their religion expects women to be modest and keep their beauty to themselves.
"People should judge us on our intelligence and skills, not our beauty," Ms Omar says.
Some Muslim women wear the burka, the all-enveloping robes with either an open or net-covered gap at the eyes.
Western countries including France, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands have banned burkas in public, saying they rob women of their identity; France has also banned Muslim head scarves, Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crosses in public schools.
Ms Hasni and Ms Omar are grateful New Zealand has no such restrictions.
"It would be a sad development if people are not allowed to portray something which is part of their religion," Ms Hasni says.
And then there was September 11, 2001, when 19 Muslim al Qaeda terrorists hijacked four planes and flew two of them into the World Trade Centre in New York, toppling both towers and killing themselves and almost 3000 others.
"My [New Zealand Post] workmates often used to joke 'don't blow me up'," Hikmat Noorebad, a fourth-year information sciences student, says.
But he grins. Both he and Mr Amer say New Zealanders easily distinguish between ordinary Muslims, who live a faith which teaches peace and respect for others, and al Qaeda terrorists.
The women have found a consideration for their religion's dietary requirements, which Ms Omar describes as "quite sweet, really".
When a class gathering is planned, they will often be asked if the likely venue is one which they feel comfortable visiting.
Their classmates have also taken the trouble to discover what foods are haram (unlawful) so they do not offend them when food is served.
It is really only pork and alcohol which are difficult for them, Ms Omar says.
More than 36,000 New Zealanders identified themselves as Muslims in the 2006 census, up 52.6% on the previous census.
Dunedin's Muslim community of about 500 people is a melting pot of up to 20 nationalities including Turks, Saudi Arabians, Indonesians, Chinese, Indians, Pakistanis and New Zealanders.
The quartet being interviewed are representative of that melding of cultures.
Mr Amer emigrated from Egypt to New Zealand with his family when he was 8 and moved to Dunedin as a year 12 pupil when his father, a surgeon, got a job at the Dunedin Medical School.
Mr Noorebad's family was torn apart by Afghanistan's civil war between ethnic groups and the Taliban, the Sunni Islamist political movement which governed the country until 2001.
His parents died and he went to live in Pakistan with an uncle.
When his uncle emigrated to New Zealand, he sponsored his nephew to come too.
Ms Hasni and Ms Omar are both Government-sponsored students from Malaysia, who arrived here two years ago.
Mr Amer says while there are a few Muslim families in Dunedin, university students make up most of the community.
Their focal point is the former Orphans Club hall on Clyde St, which was converted into a mosque about 12 years ago.
University students and staff can also pray in their central campus basement prayer room, opened at the start of last year after six years of lobbying.
Islam Awareness Week events
Today: Exhibition, Union Hall, 9am-6pm
Tomorrow: Converts talk, Burns 7 lecture theatre, 7pm
Wednesday: DVD and free food, Otago Room, OUSA Clubs and Societies Building, Albany St, 1pm
Inter-faith dialogue, Burns 4 lecture theatre, 7pm
Thursday: Video about Muhammad, Burns 4, 7pm
Saturday and Sunday: Mosque open days, 21 Clyde St, 10am-3pm