As Salaam Alaikum

I am convert to islam 5 years ago. As Live goes on I gotnow two beatyfull children and very happy whit my faith and believe. However my husband said to me today when I came back from the garden were I was as usually talking to my naighbour for more than 1 hour. I must say wayne my naeigbour is a long term friend of ours and I love to talk to him about got and the world. He is maried 19 years happily and got 3 children in the same age as my once. I just can't see anything wrong in tallking to him for hours. I am wrong? How I have to understand? Please cann you help me in this metter many thanks.

Fatima Naeem

If your new faith doesn't allow for it then you have a big conflict. Part of practicing any faith is in making the proper choices.

I know that it is rong if it was a person like your husbunds brother that will be alrighrt however since I am a muslim I know that this is wrong

Khadijah, Muhammad's wife, was a business women, who hired Muhammad and other men. Clearly she had male friends and directed them, and Muhammad obviously thought her a good choice for a wife.

Aisha, likewise, spoke with and narrated many hadith to men; she even conducted many men in the Battle of the Camel. Amongst the Islamic community, she was known as an intelligent woman who debated law with male companions.

The Qur'an's request of women in relation to other men is not that they don't engage with them, but that they do so in a modest and becoming way by covering their private parts (bosom etc) and not jingle bells on their legs to sexually attract men:

"And tell the believing women to lower their gaze and be modest, and to display of their adornment only that which is apparent, and to draw their veils over their bosoms, and not to reveal their adornment save to their own husbands or fathers or husbands fathers, or their sons or their husbands' sons, or their brothers or their brothers' sons or sisters sons, or their women, or their slaves, or male attendants who lack vigor, or children who know naught of women's nakedness. And let them not stamp their feet so as to reveal what they hide of their adornment. And turn unto Allah together, O believers, in order that ye may succeed."

Clearly this is not about women's interaction with other women or close relatives, for which such a statement would be meaningless, but is a verse about how women should interact with other men, which is only possible if they are actually to be interacting.

D