One persons rubbish is another persons treasure, one mans home another mans castle, one persons terrorist another persons freedom fighter! Whoever said life depends upon your perspective hit the nail on the head and this has never been truer than in the light of recent events in relation to the Pope.

The Pope claimed that he was trying to promote integration and Muslims believed that he was adding fuel to the fire! As I said, life depends upon your perspective!

Who we are and what we think depends to a large extent on our experiences, which I recently experienced first hand for myself. I consider myself to be very blessed as I am one of those few people that love their job; part of the reason being is that the people I work with are fantastic.

Therefore you can imagine my shock when one of my colleagues revealed that she tried to keep her distance when she realised I was Muslim. I nearly fell off my chair because I thought we got on famously! Even before she could explain my mind went into overdrive about how much damage the media has done by portraying Muslims in a bad light… blah blah.

Anyway she quickly put the brakes on my overdrive mode when she told me that her behaviour wasn’t so much because of the media, but more so because of her encounters with Muslims.

A fully covering Muslim lady that use to live next door to her tried on many occasions to convert her to Islam, but unbeknown to her, she was undermining her own efforts because in the same breath she would also bad mouth her daughterin- law, the neighbour down the street etc, which left behind a bad impression.

A guy she used to work with, used to say that he could not speak to her on the days she wore a skirt because his religion didn’t allow women to dress in such a way, but at the same time he had a girlfriend…that fully covered up of course.

Another Muslim girl she knew, on the days she wore Asian clothes she would always pray at work, but on the days she was in her western clothes you could often find her in the pub instead.

I was shocked by this because firstly, I did not know of her prejudice as it was very well hidden, and secondly, I did not know she was judging everything I did through the ‘Muslim lens’. This was a real eye opener because it made me realise that it doesn’t matter how we see things, but how others see us is what really counts.

The way we behave, what we say and what we do impacts on how our faith is perceived. Often we are so quick to tell people we are Muslims and boast that Islam is the fastest growing religion, but what is the point if we are just increasing in number and not in substance, not in quality and not in faith! The Battle of Badar was won with an army of only 313 on the strength of faith not numbers.

It’s time we learnt lessons from our past and change our perception as Muslims first. Instead of concentrating so hard on how to convert others, let’s just stop for a minute and concentrate on converting our own behaviour and challenged our perceptions first.