Why keep non-Muslim company, anyway?

I think we’ve all felt it sometimes, when you’re in a public place and you ‘feel’ someone staring at you... So you look up, and lo and behold there’s a gaze that instantly turns away. Who was that creepy non-Muslim who was just staring? (Well, let’s hope they were non-Muslim anyway :P). What did they want?

Turns out, maybe they weren’t really so creepy, and all they wanted was to observe a Muslim a little, maybe get to know the person, maybe talk to them a little.

I have a few non-Muslim friends with whom I stay in regular (and halal!) contact with from time to time. One of the really important things they’ve taught me is that, non-Muslims are, for the most part, REALLY interested in different religions and the whole idea of religion itself! I recently have had a discussion with them about the idea of ‘religion’ which sparked from their interest in Lauren Booth’s (former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s sister-in-law’s) conversion to Islam. What surprised me is that they don’t quite seem to see the need of having the presence of a religion in your life at all, forget the type of religion! To add to this, I don’t think any of them are actually atheist either! This really amazed me and I didn’t quite know how to counter their arguments...

What I do know is that I never would have had the opportunity to discuss the notion of religion with them in the first place if I hadn’t really gotten to know them a bit better. I completely see the benefit and the importance of having good Muslim company, but I also feel that if we open up to non-Muslims a little, get to know them a little, obviously in a halal way, get them to see our religion through their eyes rather than through what they’ve heard from others, then there’s a lot of benefit that both groups can draw.

Maybe we forget sometimes that we are living in the West for peaceful da’wah purposes before anything else. But, how can da’wah be as effective as it can be if we don’t first try and represent our religion in the best way possible and then try to understand the thinking of the non-Muslims?

Take my case for instance, before I can really try and talk about Islam some more, I think my job is to try and get them to see the need of ANY religion!
May Allah SWT help us to be true ambassadors of Islam with the right intentions and grant us the wisdom to be as effective as possible in our da’wah purposes. Aameen.