Mohammad Elshinawy – Hacks To Overcome An Atheists Defensiveness
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AI: Transcript ©
Be upon his messenger, Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam
and his family and his companions and all
those who tread his path. May Allah
grant us and you alike upon his path.
Say amen.
And a death while adhering to his guidance,
and a reunion around him, and a drink
from his blessed hand on the day of
judgment, the day of thirst, Allahumma'amin.
And an opportunity to see the face of
his Lord and ours, Allahumma'amim
So I was asked to speak about discussions
with an atheist.
And
while the majority
of this,
session is preparatory
knowledge,
for the
exercises,
outside for the dawah that you will be
partaking in, Insha'Allah, in Inner Harbor,
Baltimore.
I wish to actually step back. There will
still, Insha'Allah, be some value here towards that,
but actually speak a little bit about
speaking 1 on 1 with someone that may
be having
atheistic
inclinations,
the spectrum entirely,
in your personal lives. For the past 20
years, and I'm not an anomaly,
I've sort of been quite involved,
with people that come to me wondering how
to speak this to this relative or this
colleague that has become an atheist or is
considering atheism or otherwise.
And, of course,
dawah is a duty, and there's no reason
why we should pick and choose between dawah
to Muslims or non Muslims.
But if there ever was, a
lack of resources, time or otherwise,
That protecting,
those that are within the fold, take priority
over seeking and delivering the message to those
outside the fold.
Again, we create false dichotomies all the time
and do eitheror, and I I don't see
any justification for that.
But just for the sake of catering to
this need,
what happens when someone that is Muslim,
comes to you and they're
sort of,
flirting with atheism? Well, 1st and foremost, let
me say upfront.
That can be any one of us and
so we need to sort of preempt these
things.
Prevention is better than a cure. Always has.
I've dealt
with countless cases
and I would like to think of myself
as somewhat
more trained than the average layman on this
subject. But still, what does 20 years do?
Ask anyone in my space.
Our retention levels, the people you're actually able
to walk away from that very dark cliff,
right, are actually very few. Because once they're
actually at that point, it's very hard, at
least at that moment, to walk them back.
For reasons we will cover. But in general,
prevention is better than a cure. That prevention
is through solidifying faith. Faith is solidified through
association. You wanna make sure they want to
associate with you and with your community and
with your deen. You know, the socio emotional
element is huge. That's a huge part and
the most common reason why people subscribe to
faiths, whatever they may be, association.
The other one is persuasion. Muslims need to
immunize themselves and their fellow Muslims
by never thinking it's a given that we
have already very good reasons to be persuaded
of the truth of Islam,
that it's not blind faith.
When the, you know, the
prevailing
paradigms, the widespread sentiment is all religions are
man made, all religions are blind faith, We
don't live in some insulated ghettoized community. We're
a part of this world. It's in the
ether. And so we need the intellectual component
and the spiritual component, if you're a naturalist
and not just an evidentialist, but persuasion.
And then 3rd is experience. That's the 3rd
channel of faith and solidifying faith. And we
cannot do that for people, but we have
to set up the mechanisms for people to
experience faith on their own, to try to
encourage them along,
talk to them by day and pray for
them by night. Prevention is better than a
cure.
That was point number 1. Point number 2,
hijab forgive me. We'll talk about it in
the parking lot, alright?
Don't debate with web.
No, hear me out. Of course, there's a
utility debate, to debate.
But so many times,
we have these huge fumbles that didn't have
to go south as far as they did
or as fast as they did because we're
making certain assumptions
and we dive into the debate
with these presuppositions
about how things are gonna get better. So,
for instance, as I told you, association is
the number one reason for people to
get solidified in faith. It's also the number
one reason for people to have fallouts. Right?
Many people may not even realize it about
themselves. It's actually unconscious.
But the emotionality
is playing
a far greater role than the rationality, even
if they don't notice. So just take it
easy and don't take the deep dive. Don't
jump into the rabbit hole and don't just
talk to them. Because that may not be
the issue to begin with.
There could just be a shubha, just some
confusion needs clarification,
or there could be underlying
emotional issues and there's so many of them
that cause them, you know, to want to
leave.
And
that takes a completely different remedy. Right?
But in essence, always keep that in mind.
Is this person, you know, struggling with, you
know,
wanting to be right? They really want, like,
an intellectually
stimulating and satisfying answer for Islam? Or are
they struggling for wanting to be liked, right?
They feel like a misfit in society or
in the community or inferiority complex of sorts
or otherwise. That's actually the most common reason.
The data does suggest this. So keep that
in mind. Don't just jump in. Don't just,
you know, interlock with them. Check for the
root cause.
That's very important.
And then,
if it is an intellectual discussion, we're going
to have a dialogue here.
That dialogue
needs to be had by the right people.
So once again, don't just debate with them.
Because unless you're trained, unless you're a specialist,
these people can walk out of the conversation
nodding their head or lifting their nose in
the sky and say, See? Told you there's
no answer. Right? So you can actually
be a bad lawyer for a very good
case and wind up confirming their biases for
them against God and Islam.
And so don't underestimate this. Be very careful
about just jumping in. Also because, you know,
as debates continue,
people get more and more defensive. It is
just natural. Like, the ego lurks, and I
the word is operative. Lurks, hides in all
of these discussions.
You know, like, really, think about it. When
was the last time, you know, the stakes
on the debate went high, online or in
person? And then from that point, people say,
You know what?
You're right. I'm wrong. I step down from
my position and I adopt your position. You
have superior intelligence. Have you ever seen that
in, like, social media comment section before? Because
I haven't. Right? It doesn't work like this.
Because they feel cornered now that they've asserted
a position and you've asserted the opposite and
everyone's watching and so on. That's why
And I just love this eye. I love
this eye. Allah Azzawajal
says, Uddhuro idasabeeli
rabbika bil hikma. Right? You know, this is
a very famous verse.
Invite. You're not just declaring and shouting
down the truth down their throats. No one's
going to accept that. Humans are like seatbelts.
They don't come with snatching. Right?
Invite.
Make it appealing. Invite to the way of
your Lord with shikmah, with wisdom, in calculated
ways, right? Then he says, pay attention,
walma'u'ivatil
hasana
and with beautiful preaching or good preaching
wajjadilhum
see, there's room for debate And debate with
them, bin letsihi
ahsan,
in a way that's most beautiful or best.
Right?
Think about those 3 layers of a conversation.
You see, when Allah said invite them,
he said wisdom. He didn't say beautiful wisdom
because wisdom, by definition, is beautiful. Right? You're
calculated. You're figuring out
this most strategic way to work around their
defense mechanisms
to not trigger their ego, right?
And so, it would be ineloquent of the
Quran to say beautiful wisdom when wisdom, by
definition, is beautiful, right? Crafting your narrative is
an act of ribadah, beautifying your proposal. So
hikmah. But then he says, walma'u'idhatil
hasana
and
beautiful preaching or good preaching. Because, you know,
the word maw'iva, to appreciate this verse and
the layers here, maw'iva is not like ta'lim,
it's not like nasiha. Nasiha is like when
you tell someone, By the way, you have
to cover your entire foot with water in
order for the wudu to be valid, right?
That's naseeha,
just a reminder. It's just stating a point
of information.
Maw'iva
is a heartfelt reminder, Like when the Prophet
said, Woe to the ankles from the fire,
meaning, Hey, stop thinking this is a small
thing. Stop underestimating
it. So when he mentions
the downside of overlooking getting the water there,
that's more Iva.
Why is that important?
When you start getting emotional,
right? It could have an equal and opposite
reaction. You get it?
And so, Allah then qualifies beautiful preaching. Because
once emotions get involved in preaching, you're going
to have reciprocated emotion, so you gotta now
be make sure you're preaching in a beautiful
way. But then he says, wajaydilhum
and debate with them, meaning and if you're
gonna debate with them, then debate with them
not in a way that's beautiful,
debate with them, bin letihi ahsan, right? The
superlative they call it. In the most beautiful
way, because when the conversation gets heartfelt
and then it escalates to a debate, then
the stakes are higher. The defense mechanism is
even higher.
The lack of receptiveness is even more present.
So you need to be even more crafty
and even more beautiful and even more gentle
to work around it. Does this make sense?
And so it's called read the room. It's
called emotional intelligence. We have all these terms
for it. The Quran says,
Know where you stand at the different phases
of a conversation.
So that all this so that you can
work around it
and you don't push them away instead of
inviting them because the ayah begins by saying
invite.
You know, when the Prophet Alaihi Wasallam
said, Latakunu a'unan shaytan You Ala Akhikum
Don't be an assistant
to Shaytan against your brother.
You know how you can help Shaytan against
your brother? One of 2 ways. One of
them is watering down the truth, right? So
you're not making it clear what you're calling
me to, right? The beauty of Islam is
irreconizable.
But the other way is
that you stuff the truth down his throat.
No, you need it in front of his
eyes. You need to, like, wave it at
his heart. You don't want to just stuff
it down their throat. That's the other way
you can help Shaytan against your brother. May
Allah protect us from that. Say, I mean.
And so the idea is hikmah is about,
How do I heal this particular person? How
do I win them over? How do I
make a point in the most productive way?
And many a times that is by don't
debate them. Refer them to experts who can
have this conversation with them. One of the
things I love to do is to refer
them to written resources
because you can't really talk back to an
article. You can't talk back to a book.
So it's a strategic way to keep it
a one way conversation.
And there's less stakes. He's not saying as
much so he won't have to swallow as
much of his ego if he wants to
concede to some of my points or the
points that I'm proposing, right? We're inviting to
Allah here. Always remember that. You're not inviting
to yourself.
Be very humble. Allah could turn the light
on in their heart, turn the light off
in your heart, right?
Stay close to Allah. Stay humble. Ask him
to open this person's heart, make you an
instrument of guidance,
keep you guided, all of that.
So
and just focus on moistening their hearts. You
know, I'll tell you,
some of even like the the staunch
opposition
to the prophet, alayhis salatu wassalam,
they were very slack in, like, being forced
to listen to him. You guys know the
famous hadith in Ruz' ibn Rabi'ah?
Ruz' ibn Rabi'ah became Muslim, by the way.
R'us' ibn Rabi'ah was one of his staunchest
enemies, alayhi salatu wa salaam. He was the
one that came to him and said, Muhammad,
listen, man. And like,
let me,
adapt the translation.
His words, if you read them between the
lines, he's basically telling the prophet Muhammad Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam,
Cut the nonsense, cut the crap, right? Like
he's telling me, I'm calling you to God,
not me. I'm not asking you for wealth
and so on. Imagine all these ayaats, Then
the prophet Alaihi Wasallam
is approached by utzba and everybody's like, Listen,
what do you want? You want money? You
do want money. We're just not offering enough
money. Is that what it is? You want
money? We'll gather money for you. You want
women? Give you all the women. You you
are you sick? We'll spend all we'll go
broke. We'll get you a doctor. If you're
bananas, if you're nuts, you're we'll help you.
Just so he's totally, you know, insulting the
Prophet alaihi wa sallam, and this could be
in front of like a huge crowd. And
what does the Prophet alaihi wa sallam do?
He just
listens.
He listens. He indulges him.
And then after he finishes,
he says to him, And tay to Abu
Walid,
are you done yet, O Abu Walid?
You know, Abu Walid, the father of Al
Walid?
When the Arabs wanna respect someone, they call
him father of so and so, right?
He said he waits,
and then he asks him, Are you finished?
And he calls him by an honorific, father
of al Walid.
And so the guy's forced to say, Yeah,
I guess I'm done.
You know, like, essentially, obviously this is a
2022 translation, right? But he says, Yeah, kala
fasma' even. Now hear me out.
And he totally disregards all of the personal
stuff, and he begins to recite to him
Surat Fusilat.
And about a page and a half into
Surat Fusilat,
Abu Walid still hasn't cut him off,
right?
And not just now is the world hearing
Quran,
and not just now has he won the
moral battle, SallAllahu Alaihi Wasallam, and won the
negotiation, if you will, the intellectual negotiation,
Utsbab
Nurabi'a has no choice
but to get up and grab the prophet's
mouth and say, Please stop.
Fearing he he felt it himself. This, like,
he this is an admissal of defeat. When
you're recycling verses of the punishment of the
of the previous nations for their rebel rebellion,
and your guy who's saying you're you're talking
nonsense has to tell you, please stop. And
he literally holds the Prophet's mouth, Stop.
This is an art, right? May Allah Azzawajal
make us artists of Dawah Sayamil.
And so,
moistening their hearts through your manners,
insaidu Radu Rabiyar is a big part of
this. Also, moistening their hearts trying to revive
their spirituality. Like, some person may think if
a person is not Muslim or doesn't believe
in God, there's no point in me trying
to, like,
tenderize their heart in a spiritual way because
they don't believe a spirit exists. But that
doesn't matter. You know that a spirit exists.
And Allah revealed to you a little secret
called a fitra. There's a fitra. They have
a fitra. You invoke their fitra.
You know, when the man came to the
prophet sallallahu alaihi wa sallam and he said
to him, I find hardness in my heart.
What do I do? He said, Zulil Makbarah
wemsa halaratsil
yateem. Visit the graveyard
and caress the head of the orphan.
Go see the dead. Go see the vulnerable.
Go see how unpredictable life is. You think
this will not revive questions
and make inquisitive
and less defensive. It will not sober up
so many people that just don't wanna think
about God right now.
This awakens their spirit. See, the real issue
nowadays, by the way, like why is atheism
out and about? Why is it abound?
It's because of science, right?
I actually would say yes, just to meet
the the the my interlocutor if I'm debating
earlier. I'd say, Yeah, I agree. Science does,
you know, cause atheism. The advancement in science
in our age caused the advancement of atheism.
It's pretty clear. Science caused atheism.
But it's not like science has disproven God.
That's just ridiculous. Right?
Like, what? How does physics tell me about
the metaphysical, the unseen world, when we're observing
what we can see? It just You need
to remove that discussion from the physics department
altogether. No, that's not the issue. The scientific
instruments of our age have created
so much luxury
that people naturally are going to become heedless
of God.
They're going to develop the God complex.
That's natural. The Quran told us that.
The human being always crosses his limits when
he feels like he has no more needs
anymore.
So that the the independence
and the comfort and the luxury and the
the apparatuses of pleasure created by scientific and
technological advancement, that's what created
atheism in such large hordes now.
And so that much we can agree with.
We are a people that are spoiled
more than any other generation, and so we're
more rebellious,
more godless than any other generation.
You know the famous scientist,
Anthony Flew, who wrote Why the World's Most
Notorious Atheist Now Believes in God or something
like this. That was the title of his
book. He said, It took me 50 years
to realize that when I was 18 and
I disbelieved in God, I had no grounds
for it whatsoever. I was just being silly.
There's actually no philosophical grounds for saying the
problem of evil, which is why he left,
equals no God because
God can know of the evil and be
merciful and be all powerful and still let
it happen because he's the most wise, right?
And he's the most just, Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
Right?
And he knows the hereafter will make him
not only just, but he will even be
gracious, not just. So it took me it
took me 50 years to just snap out
of my childish approach to God. It was
just heedlessness. It was just the arrogance that
came with our intellectuality.
And so you need to know that even
if someone doesn't recognize that, they need gentle,
humbling process.
You know, one of our,
our researchers at Iqin, Doctor. Hassan Alwani, it's
a great Morabi as well. He says, and
I gave this example actually in this room
yesterday. I said, If I were to slap
this podium,
assuming it's wood, right? And pull an apple
out of it, you'd be blown away. You'd
say, This is miraculous. This is supernatural.
So why don't we feel like every apple
that is produced out of a wooden branch
on every single tree is miraculous and supernatural?
It's not like there's absence of signs. There's
just presence of arrogance.
You understand the issue here?
And we with, you know, like with telescopes
and microscopes
can see more signs of God than previous
generations.
But because there's more arrogance there,
more darkness to the heart, the heedlessness
doesn't prevent us, doesn't allow us
to make use of any of it.
You know, it's like Surah Al Kahf, by
the way.
They told me it take a little longer
than 20 minutes due to Imam Suhaib. He
actually caught COVID. So may Allah give him
a cure, say amen,
and make an elevation for his ranks.
So I'll split the extra time with
our brother, Muhammad Qajab.
I'm winding down here for sure. But,
in Surat Al Kahsh,
the second story is like the trial of
affluence.
The man who had it made, he had
a garden that nobody had. He was set
up. What did he do when he walked
into his garden?
He doubted God,
right? He had it made and said, you
know, Ma'a'bunnu antabidahadihe
abada. I don't think this will ever perish.
This is this is here for good.
Right?
Wamaa abun nusaaataqaima,
and this is probably not hereafter anyway.
Walainrudit
And if I happen to get called back
to God, I'm going to find some better
stuff there anyway. He gave me that if
he exists and he gave me, that means
he loves me. The delusion that comes with
material gains.
And it's so sad because the owner of
that garden had produce, right? The apple example.
Likewise, we have science. Instead of driving us
to God, it blinds us from God.
What's the whole problem here? It is humility.
So that is your issue. Moisten someone's heart
to humility.
Humility.
Finally, there's a story that I always circle
back to
in my dawah.
I was in a university in New York
City,
and they asked me to speak on the
subject of God loves you.
And so I just strung together what we
know from Allah introducing himself to us in
the Quran, you know, about his love and
his mercy and his compassion and his care.
I hadith and a hadith, I hadith and
a hadith, nothing more. I know that's enough
and I know that's best. A few days
later, I get an email from my sister.
She says to me, I'm really sorry. I
had to walk out of your lecture. I
couldn't be there. I was getting too emotional.
I'm having a crisis of faith. I need
to speak to someone. So me and my
wife make an appointment with her. A few
days later, we drive over. We meet her
in the cafeteria of the university.
I buy fries, like, for myself and her.
The path to the heart is the stomachs.
Remember that one. Okay? I'm dead serious. It
works.
Like
because you know, when I say don't debate,
they're gonna keep wanting to drag you into
the debate. Right?
And so let's get some food. You're my
brother and sister outside of this conversation, right?
Keith, it is not cowardice. It is strategy,
right? So anyway,
we sat down, fries are there, and she
says, I don't even know where I stand.
I said, Where? Prophethood, oneness of God, existence
of God? She's like, Rewind all the way
back. I don't even know if there's a
God.
I said, Okay.
So I'm already, like,
wondering, like, if there's no God, if God
is just imaginary, then why would you get
emotional
if I'm talking about how awesome God is
in my lecture, right? If it's a fairy
tale, it shouldn't move you. I didn't tell
her this.
Then I'm thinking, Well, how should I approach
this?
So I just started talking about, like, cause
and effect and contingency arguments and this stuff,
but I wanted to, like, you know, dilute
it from mass consumption. So there was a
napkin in front of me on the table
with the fries. So I said to her,
like, if this napkin
if I told you it got here on
the table all by itself, would you
believe this?
Or would you think I'm crazy? I was
like, No, come on. That can't be true.
I said, Okay, let's take it a step
up. What if I told you the napkin
manufactured itself by on its own?
She said, Yeah, that would be harder to
believe. And I sort of dragged it out.
I kept escalating from the napkin to the
cell phone, from the cell phone to the
universe, and so on and so forth, right?
Deliberately.
And I just kept talking. And then, like,
I don't know how long it was, maybe
5, 10 minutes.
I'm just like, Sister,
can I stop yet?
She's like I told her, like, I'm a
shirk. They give me microphone, give me 45
minutes, and I have to go. They press
start. Like, you gotta tell me when to
stop. Is this working?
You know what she said to me? And
you feel like such an idiot.
She said, you had me at the napkin.
And the reason I cite this,
why did she walk out if she eats
fantasy,
why was the simplest proof
enough for her, is that people ultimately,
they want to believe in God, but not
just want to.
People want to connect with him as well.
You see, when I say atheism, you need
to understand the
domain in which you're playing.
There is a worldwide
decline in what is called hard or true
atheism.
Atheism is just like a placeholder for people.
Like, I'm not down with organized religion, or
I'm not sure if there's proof for God,
or something like this. Right? The agnos and
the Many of these people don't know the
nuances between these terms. Right? But atheism, as
in asserting that there is no God, and
this is a stillbirth. This was born dead.
It was never meant to keep its momentum.
It's against the grain. There's a worldwide, you
know, decline in this sort of Because you
know why?
Fitra, right? Like psychologically,
emotionally,
people are unwilling to accept
that there's no explanation for where I came
from,
why I'm here, where I'm going. That just
creates too much anxiety. The human being is
not willing to accept this,
Right?
And so,
like, no, I'm not going to believe that
I'm just going to wake up on a
bus and just enjoy the ride without asking
how I got here, or who's driving, where
we go, and No. I'm not going to
accept this.
And
considering that is the case, don't now assume
that, Oh, the world's coming back to religion.
No.
The world, most of the world, if you
actually probe a little bit, that leave, you
know, religion,
they maybe dabble with atheism, they wind up
in negative theology, or what are called the
nones, or the non religious, or whatnot, or
the agnostics, or whatever it is.
And I find this so profound because
the Qur'an
The Quran never really addresses atheism head on.
It doesn't.
Like, it it it When it speaks about
arguments that could be told to an atheist,
it says them in a rhetorical, like Afillahi
Shek. Like, is there any? Meaning there absolutely
isn't any doubt regarding God. Amkholiqumirayi
shayin? Were they created out of nothing? That's
a rhetorical. That's not a real question, you
know, as if the person doesn't that's supposed
to humble you and say, no. Of course
not. We were not created out of nothing.
It dismisses the hard atheist because there is
no hard atheist. There is no true atheist.
There could be someone trying to continually bury
that notion of theirs.
But then you when you realize, wait, the
Quran doesn't really, like, take on atheism head
on and Allah knew that atheism would sort
of rise in certain periods,
very rarely but it would. Why? But then
you see the Quran goes to great lengths.
If everyone believes in God, then why does
the Quran go to great lengths in describing
him?
Because there's a world of difference
between having a placeholder
saying Supreme Being, God, and Allah out there,
right? Even pagans would use the word, And
between knowing Allah enough,
right? Learning about developing your God image, if
I can borrow the psych term from yesterday,
in a way that would make him relevant
for you. And I'm willing to submit to
him and accept him Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala.
And that is why, by the way, the
describing God to people as framed by the
Quran
is the true route to curing atheism for
those that are receptive.
You're like, hijab's gonna kill me again. I
can't believe I'm not throwing shade. I swear
to God, I'm not throwing shade. He did
his PhD in the kelam cosmological argument, and
we need more of this. But
I personally,
without getting sectarian here,
I don't believe
that there is much value at all
in getting into discussions
that intellectually
prove God's existence.
And I need to be done in
4 minutes.
Why?
Because
I believe if you get to a point
where you're doubting God's existence,
that's not the real issue.
The issue could be your mechanism with which
you're processing. It's blurred by heedlessness, blurred by
arrogance,
blurred by radical skepticism,
cynicism.
You
know, read the story of Al Ghazali
for example, who when he went down the
philosophical path and he punctured through it, became
a master of it.
Many Westerners think he's the consider him, I
don't mean that in a derogatory way. Consider
him the greatest critique of, you know, Greek
philosophy, for example. Some Westerners consider him this.
But what did he arrive at? All this
stuff is just a sham, right? He, at
the end, had a fallout even with rational
theology,
right?
And then let's leave Ghazali for a second.
Rene Descartes,
you guys know the concept of like Cartesian
doubt? Descartes basically said, I can't trust anything.
The only thing I know is that I
think. I think therefore I am. That's what
they tell you in Philosophy 101, right? I
think therefore I am. You don't know that
Descartes had a crisis of it. And he
said, Wait a minute. How do I know
I think?
How do I know basically I'm not in
the matrix?
How do I know that I'm not a
brain in a jar with wires plugged into
it, like being manipulated in my thoughts? How
do I know I think?
It's skepticism.
Doubting is not a path to knowledge. It
is a path to further doubt. It's a
black hole.
How do I know I'm not part of
an aliens video game?
Nobody say, Good point, please.
Right?
And so, you know what you know what
Descartes said in the end? He needed an
anchor for his I think, and that anchor
was God. He said, You know what? There
has to be something that is a given.
There must be a God, he said,
and God must not be a deceiver or
else there's no point in even trying to
think things through. And so, removing God
from skepticism, removing God from the intellectual discussion
is the way to do things.
When you do your Dua with someone, I'm
gonna say it again,
invoke their sitra
that you know is there. Invoke the ayaat
of Allah, the verses I gave you an
example of, and the universe,
right, we spoke about.
And then also you want to rattle their
confidence in their intellectuality with a little bit
of logic, a little bit of reasoning, whether
it's like inductive reasoning, the empirical to science,
or deductive reasoning.
Sure, fine. But let it start with the
fitra. Let it start with
the ayat of Allah, the observed and the
recited. And let it be this also,
and the bridge for all of those proofs
to get into their heart after Allah's permission
is what?
Your manners.
Keep the relationship salient.
Your manners are the bridge over which your
proofs march into people's hearts and over the
walls of their defense mechanisms.