After delivery and assembly of my furniture yesterday, the two delivery men took a little time out for coffee. One of them, looking at my bookshelf said, “the noble Qur’an and the Glorious Qur’an, what’s the difference?” I told him “no difference, it’s just different names. They are translations of the Qur’an”.

What followed was a burst of quick-fire comments around 9/11 and 7/7.  Had I known beforehand that these average white Englishmen in their mid 30s had this number of questions, I would have asked my wife to cook a proper ‘Indian’ for lunch. We all know how much an Englishman loves his curry – that’s prejudice based on fact.
 
Whilst I sensed the inquisitive nature of their interest, I could also feel the resentment and even anger against Muslims. “With respect mate”, said one of them. “As an Englishman, how dare people come to my country and look down on us and our laws.”

Underneath the apparent dislike lay an eagerness to understand and the desire for answers to the questions floating in their heads.
 
Some 30 minutes later…we were still engrossed in discussion. Yes, about honour killings, terrorism, and sharia law in Britain. Then one of them said, “this problem we have between Islam and us is all caused by the situation in Palestine.”

The penny dropped. If Jo Blog the Millwall fan can pinpoint the occupation of Palestine as a major cause of the friction, perhaps we still have a chance to win our very own battle for ‘hearts and minds’. This is despite Ms Phillips and her ilk in the media.
 
The question is how? For a start we can do away with the infighting and have a semblance of unity before we can proceed.
 
The idiocy of lack of engagement with wider non-Muslim society must also be ditched. Our neighbours, work colleague or fellow students (etc) all have the same miscomputations and questions. It seems engagement on a personnel level, which until now remains largely absent, is the best tool we have. This can only happen with a paradigm shift in our da’wa methodology.

Instead of having an inward-facing approach confined to the Muslims, we need to focus primarily on the non-Muslim community.
 
Meanwhile, 35 minutes later they concluded by saying “I tell you one thing mate, we now know not to judge Muslims by what we hear in the media or by the actions of one or two individuals.” And that’s just over coffee; just imagine what can be achieved by a full dinner over two hours multiplied by 2 million Muslims.