Pitying the Kuffar?

Ibn Abbas held the opinion that touching the kafir breaks your wudhu.  I believe I read the above statement in the work of an orientalist and it had no evidence to support it so I am not sure if this truly is the opinion of Ibn Abbas.  However, the statement got me thinking about the issue of the kuffar and the Muslims approach to them.  Indeed, al wala wal bara is a part of the Muslim aqeeda and it is something that Muslims must adhere to very strictly.  The topic seems to be the current hot-topic amongst many Muslim bloggers after the article posted by Shaykh Tawfique Chawdhury on MuslimMatters and Imam Anwar al-Awlaki’s response to it on his own blog about working with the kuffar. 

However, one thing I wanted to point out and emphasize while all this debating is going on is the blessing, we, as Muslims, truly have been blessed with.  I mean, subhan’Allah, can you imagine life without Islam?  We have been blessed with guidance from the Lord of the Worlds.  In addition to al wala’ wal bara’, I feel great remorse towards the non-Muslim and I feel great pity towards them.  I was at a restaurant less than a week ago and they were playing a music-video of some MTV rapper.  The MTV rapper had women and money and the dunya in his music video, yet you could tell he wasn’t happy.  If you look at people in the Western society today, you notice that they go through ups and downs like it’s nobody’s business.  Depression is extremely common in the USA and UK nowadays.  When I look at the non-Muslim, I realize they have been deprived of so many things.  Just think about the following, the non-Muslim:

1. Does not realize who is His Lord nor does he have a relationship with His Lord
2. Does not understand the purpose of life
3. Is in a continuous state of najis (impurity), hence why the first thing someone does after converting to Islam is take a bath (ghusl)
4. Has never tasted the sweetness and khushoo of the prayer
5. Has no comprehension of tawakkul and relying on God, therefore causing stress and depression
6. Will never be truly happy for we know happiness is not with wealth but in the heart
7. Has never experienced true brotherhood (not the one where you pay money to have friends in a fraternity)
8. Does not have a proper relationship with society (where it’s with the parents, the masjid, or the community)
9. Does not have the beauty of the greeting of the salam
10. Does not experience the sweetness of faith (emaan)
11. Solves problems with alcohol instead of with dua or the Quran
12. Does not know what true fun/pleasure is (compare going to the club with brotherhood)
13. Has nothing to look forward to it (everyday is a blessing for us and we look forward to meeting our Lord, insh’Allah)
14. Money is their Lord and the lack of it depresses them and they will never have their fill (b/c of greed)
15. Their women are completely degraded and slaves to a sexual society

Number ten really hits the nail on the head.  We need to be thankful everyday for the Islam that has bestowed upon us.  We need to make dua to Allah (SWT) that He allows us to die in a state of emaan.

Therefore, O Muslim, be thankful for the blessing that is Islam and feel extreme gratitude to have been excluded from those that have been deprived of it.

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