This is the story of how I lost a friend. Perhaps it would have been better if it had been to death! Don’t be shocked, I mean every word if she had died before the tragedy at least I would have been comforted with hope and prayers that she would meet Allaah as a believer. But she renounced Islam and became a non-Muslim! I lost my friend to a lie, and watched helplessly as she walked down the path of destruction. . We were all young and happy, the typical trendy hijab sisters. We were not too rigid about the way we wore our scanty hijabs, it went with the mood and the occasion. We had just joined a new Islamic group that had room for our type; the born-in-Islam-not- too-serious-but-sure-of-Islam ones.
The group was the newest thing in town and anybody and everybody worth being named belonged. There, we could do our own bit of Islam and still have fun. We could dress up and there were boys! It was just right! So we went into it enthusiastically. Every weekend we would meet at one of our houses and prepare for the first part of the fun meetings:
dressing up. Then we would drive down in my friends bus (her parents let her have a bus and that made it all the more fun!) for the programme. Along the way, my friend started to behave in a strange way that looking back, I found out were warning signs, but I didn’t know them then. One day as we left for the programme, she told me about the wonderful visitor she had in the night. My friend had met a man who appeared with lights all around him in a dream. She said the man told her he was Jesus Christ! I listened to her but didn’t make too much out of it. My friend was an expressive person and I knew she liked attention even if it meant making up fantastic stories to get it! And then one day we started to talk about a man of god we had seen on TV and laugh at some of his antics. My friend did not join in the laughter. Rather she took the opposing position and started to argue hotly. At first we all laughed and waved aside her siding with evil (if you excuse my pun!). Then we became confused when she wouldn’t stop and even started to sound jumbled up and confused herself! As I watched and listened to her, I finally heard the alarm bells going off in a frenzy in my head. Later after the incident, I pulled her aside and asked her what was going on and why did she behave the way she had earlier. She was on the defensive. She started to ask if there was anything wrong with talking about Jesus Christ, after all he was a Prophet of Allaah and as Muslims, we all had to believe in him, and that she didn’t like how we were always "attacking and making fun" of Christianity. After that day, my friend would always have one engagement or the other on the day of the meeting and after a while she stopped going altogether. Not long after that I had to go away for sometime to another state. By the time I saw my friend again, she was praising Jesus with every yawn and declaring Satan a liar with each stone she tripped over! I asked her why and she went -into one long demonstration on how she had found salvation and the Lords plan for her life through Jesus. The Hijabs were replaced with trendy hats and hairstyles and tight-fitting denims and of course a silver cross around her neck. We have since lost touch, not that I abandoned her or anything, just that the ministrations she would give me each time we met just got tiring and distasteful. The last time I saw her at another friends place, she was already married, had a child and a husband that beat her black and blue (as I heard!), But that is of course not because she is a non-Muslim. For me, the whole thing made me realize the value of what I had and how truly precious Islam is. What do you do with a precious thing? You take care of it, cherish it and never let go of it! And that, insha Allaah is what I have been doing. May Allaah keep me on His path till my time comes and make me meet Him with good deeds in Hereafter.Amin Olasunkanmi. Abuja.