Submitted by : qalamuddin on Youth

Following a friend is the trend
Nothing new nothing grand
It has been done before our time
Look at history there is a sign

Good friends are hard to find
They are like gems – very fine!
Bad company we should shunned
But maybe you are their calling! Don’t be stunned

If we refused the bad company
We will miss the opportunity
To transform them entirely
Following the Islamic capillary

Some 1400 years ago
Our beloved Rasulullah (saw) did not forgo
When the companions did not understand*
Rasulullah (saw) stood by them

The trick is not to follow them
But to advice them
“Oh! They are ignorant and stubborn!”
I do not want their burdens

Indeed, Al-Quran mentioned – a tale of two friends
A good lesson it transcends
Since one of them his religion he sells
Because of a friend he was sent to hell**

So help them
Be a true friend
Don’t shun them
But change them

Good friends are like fragrance***
You are looking at in one direction
To you there are some “Friends” without devotion
Maybe to them you could be their only salvation

The job is not easy
Again we learnt from history
Never a “dakwah” work is without hardship
But just do it for Allah swt and your new friendship

But a warning must be sound
In Rasulullah (saw) a good example is found
The job is only to advice – you do not issue an edict
As only Allah swt gives the final verdict

Penned by Firdaus@Qalamuddin
27 Ramadan 1436

* When wine drinking was legal the companions were drunk and created problem but Rasulullah saw did not shunned them, he tolerated and endured. Once wine drinking was illegal they responded with good sense and kicked their drinking habit immediately

** Soorah al-Furqan 25:27-29 “And the Day the wrongdoer will bite on his hands [in regret] he will say, "Oh, I wish I had taken with the Messenger a way. Oh, woe to me! I wish I had not taken that one as a friend. He led me away from the remembrance after it had come to me. And ever is Satan, to man, a deserter." This is the story of Uqbah Ibn Abi Mu’ayt, He, because of his friend Ubayy Ibn Khalaf, shunned away from Islam when he had already accepted it. (Tafsir al-Tabari).

*** “A good friend and a bad friend are like a perfume-seller and a blacksmith respectively: The perfume-seller might give you some perfume as a gift, or you might buy some from him, or at least you might smell its fragrance. As for the blacksmith, he might singe your clothes, and at the very least you will breathe in the fumes of the furnace.” (Sahih Al-Bukhari, Volume 3, Hadith 314)