#Males and #Females – “#Just_Friends” ? After a long day of hard work with your peers on a project, a sister suggests that all of you hang out at the pizza place nearby for a late lunch. The problem is, your group of peers is made up of both guys and girls. “But we’re all friends!” protests the sister when you, as a brother, bring up the issue. So you think about it and agree, because after all, you say – “She’s like a sister to me.”
Key phrase here: “like a sister.” She isn’t really your sister, which means that there are limitations in how you relate to her. Nowadays, under the guise of Islamic brotherhood and sisterhood, many are unfortunately committing sins in the name of friendship. Islam, however, does not permit such close relationships between non-Mahrams.
Of course, living in the West, there are times when non-Mahrams do interact – but there is a difference between how we do so with our colleagues and with our friends. We interact on a regular basis with our colleagues regarding the work that has brought us together on a professional level. We also interact regularly with our friends, but our topics of conversation are not restricted to just business. Furthermore, we spend time with our colleagues at university or at the workplace – basically, any place that is relevant to business meetings. However, we can meet our friends in both formal and informal settings.
Our colleagues and friends are not one and the same. Keeping that in mind, we are supposed to interact with non-Mahrams as colleagues, not as friends. Unnecessarily spending time with non-Mahrams – doing things like hanging out or having long conversations just to kill time – is out of the question, because that is what we would do with a friend.
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