Scene 1:  You’re walking down the street, trying to keep track of how many subhanAllahs you’ve said since you left Sid Smith when sub-han-ALLAH, is that Maryam standing on the street corner talking to that foreign brother who just joined the MSA? What is agwan…  You were going to say salaam, but maybe you should just keep walking.

Scene 2: You’ve just entered Bahen and you head to the bathroom to make wudu. As you walk out, you see Aisha standing by the doors next to the prayer space, clearly done praying, and now just chatting up the whole jamaat. You tut, tut and head in to make your nawafil before this young lady engages you in conversation.

Scene 3: You’re scanning the premises to see if you can find a brother around to go grab a bite with when suddenly- Hey! Anas! And who? Halima? What the ham! Maybe you should eat alone today.

Scene 4: You walk in late to class – as per usual. You look for your best bro, Musa, and discover he’s settled for a seat next to Amina – as per usual. Man, it’s time to find some new friends.

Scene 5: You had a really late night and while waking up for Fajr is second nature to you, staying up is not your forte. So you collapse into a deep rest and mama, feeling sorry for your long day yesterday, decides to let you sleep in a bit. At 11:32 your cat begins to caress your face with his 4 inch nails and you jerk out of bed realizing you’ve got class at 12. Of course the TTC fails you, and now you’ve missed another lecture. But lucky you! That girl Maryam, who has Stats with you, is approaching. She’s more than happy to stop and let you know that the prof said your assignment deadline has been extended until next week. Thank goodness you saw her!

Now it’s Dhuhr time so you go to Bahen to pray and alhamdulilah, you find all your buddies ready to do the same. After prayer, you guys are heading out when a younger sister, Aisha, calls out to your group. As you all turn obediently, you learn that your friend Zain – her older brother- forgot his dinner at home that morning. He’s fasting, so she asks if one of you has class with him that night and if you could please pass on this container of palow, jazakAllah.

Smelling that rice makes you super hungry but your friends all depart because they have a soccer game to play – soccer’s not your thing. You walk into Robarts’ food court and spot Halima, who is a family friend and whose father you heard recently passed away. You head over to give your condolences and see how the family’s doing before grabbing food.

Wanting to seize the first opportunity for change, you decide to get to your next class early. Apparently everyone else has done the same, too, and there are only two seats left. Seeing that one of these seats is next to sister Amina you decide to sit over there because you realize that your friend Salman hasn’t arrived yet and since he’s allergic to curry powder and Amina always smells like curry powder, you decide to take one for the team and let him have the other seat. Okay, okay this one was for comic relief – forgive me.

Inter-gender relations – the topic of this article- have been the topic of my life for the past year or so. Islamic rules on the matter are very plain and indisputable, but I often find myself in a mess of hypocrisy because while I really don’t believe that boys and girls can ever be friends, I’m time and again in a position where we’ll behave as such. This is frustrating enough for the sole reason that it’s not what Allah SWT has ordained for us and His pleasure is what we aim for in everything we do. To add to it, it is uber awkward. And why shouldn’t it be; we’re supposed to be able to feel shame and remorse innately. So it comes as no great surprise, then, that being in a ‘hanging out with my friend’-type atmosphere with a member of the opposite sex might lead to thinking “what the heck am I doing here…”

But I’m not one to see negativity as an impediment to growth; I’d much rather utilize it as fertilizer. As the old saying goes, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

So here’s my solution, and it may seem outlandish but I think it’ll work. First and most crucially, I make du’a that Allah SWT give me and all of us the tawfiq to be ever-conscious of our conversations and our selves, ameen. If we, as brothers and sisters, don’t absolutely need to talk to each other, let’s not. Vain speech is undesirable no matter who you’re talking to, anyway, so this should be good practice.

Next, I will try to remember that while Allah SWT is watching us all the time and although His opinion of us is most important, He has the ability to judge our intentions – others don’t. So I intend to bear in mind as much as possible how unnatural and out of place it really looks to the outside eye when I’m, oh, I don’t know,  standing on a street corner laughing with a group of brothers. Not because I have a fear of my reputation catching up with me but because the mu’min is a mirror for another mu’min. We must do good to encourage others to do good. Upholding a noble character outwardly is as important as doing so inwardly.  In doing this, inshAllah, my feelings of being absurdly misplaced when spending unnecessary time in the company of brothers will become a productive motivation to just, stop.

As an aside note, I also refuse to judge anyone, brothers and sisters alike, for their apparent engagement in this fitnah. Reason being that today it’s Maryam and tomorrow it may be me. As the various scenarios show, we shouldn’t play judge and assume the worst of our people. If you can have a valid explanation, why can’t he? Seriously, wouldn’t it blow to have people think all the awful things that you think about them, about you? Think about it. Or actually- don’t.

WAllahu Alim.
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