Are there a lot of Muslims in your area?
For those of you who say no, I have a few questions:
1. are you active in giving Dawah?
1b. Do you feel you have adequate knowledge to give Dawah
2. If given the chance, would you move to region with more Muslims?
3. Do you have mainly nonMuslim friends?
4. Do you keep close relationships with your nonMuslim friends? Or do you keep limited but open relationships?
4b. In the limited relationship, are you psychologically/imaan wise affected by those restrictions in your interactions with others, as they cannot fully understand you as a Muslim?
1. I'm a walking da'wah, as soon as people see me they ask me questions and alhamdulilah I don't really have to do a lot of the work as me covering myself is interesting apparently. :X
b. I'm so so I guess, alhamdulilah I've learned SO much in the past 2 years. Seriously, I'd never imagine that I'd be like I am right now. Alhamdulilah whenever my co-workers kind of ask me about the islamic perspective on something, I can give them answer. But you can never get enough knowledge eh.
2. Yeah, alhamdulilah though I've had a great upbringing. I went to school with 80% Somalis and 90% Muslims, where we could always go to afternoon classes late because we were praying jum'ah at school. We actually used to hold jum'ah prayers at school and bring in speakers. We had a lot of campaigns about making more students aware of the food being sold at the cafeteria (some of them contained kanseer - pig - and nobody knew). And my whole area was Somali and Muslim, you could keep your doors open and nobody would steal or coming in and try to do anything to you. Everyone knew each other. You could hop into other people's cars, of course you knew them, and pray fajr at the masjid early in the morning.
I don't live in Toronto anymore, but alhamdulilah where I live now is just as great. Our Muslim community is active, though not as much. And the masjid is really close by me. Everyone's nice and sweet, and the hospitality here is just as great. The only difference here is in the numbers, there were more Muslims where I lived.
3. Nope, I don't really like being friends with non-Muslims (or close to them) because inevitably their actions will rub off on me. With Muslims there's more things I can talk about, you can be closer to them (ie. go to the masjid together, learn Quran together, memorise the Quran etc.). With a non-Muslim you can't be as close to them. And to me, I can't fathom the idea of being remotely bestfriends to someone who disobeys or doesn't even believe in Allaah ta'ala (not that he needs anyone to believe in him - alhamdulilah).
4. I don't really keep close with them, my bestfriends are all Muslims, mostly people I grew up with. Going to high school in the West really opens your eyes to how disgusting the lives they lead are: - alcohol until you can't walk anymore, drugs, fornication etc. Astaghfirullaah, I can't even wrap my mind around it.
4b. No, not at all. Because if I were all ~*honky dory*~ and ''woo hoo spring break'' with them, whilst simultaneously praying and asking Allaah for forgiveness, it'd make me a hypocrite. I give da'wah, but it doesn't mean I have to be close to non-Muslims. Some of them don't even keep it respectful, they just wanna be all stank and to prove your religion is wrong.
Those restrictions are set by me to protect my imaan. Otherwise If I falter in that, and I don't protect it, it's as if I'm saying it's ''okay''. Astaghfirullaah.
