AITA for telling my muslim friend she was entitled?

I'm going to try to tell this in a way that is as unbiased as I can...So we live in a muslim majority area and most of my friend group consists of ex muslims( like myself), with the exception of one female friend that still identifies as muslim. We were planning a day trip on the group chat and my muslim friend jumps in and tells us " If there's going to be alcohol then I'm out and if you want me there please respect my beliefs".

Our other friend gets annoyed and retaliates by telling her " it's your right to refuse to join in on the drinking but it's not your right to impose on people what they can or can't do". At this point, she explained that she wasn't telling us that because she was deliberately trying to impose anything but simply because in Islam there is a teaching that says muslims technically are committing a sin if they sit with people while they drink alcohol (even if they don't drink themselves). They start going back and forth, and my other friend brings up smoking. To give you some context, her fiancé smokes indoors or outdoors everytime we go out with them eventhough none of us are smokers. So he was trying to argue with her by the logic of " your fiance's smoking technically bothers us and makes us uncomfortable in the same way you hate our drinking but we still don't say anything"

Eventually I jump in and propose a compromise. I told her that I was willing to accomodate her values to make her comfortable but that I expected the same from her. I told her that none of us were going to drink in her presence as long as her fiancé promised to not smoke around us. She replies with " he's not going to smoke indoors, just outdoors" . At this point I tell her " If there's no indoor/outdoor exception for the alcohol, there's no exception for the smoking."

So this is where the argument started. She started telling me that I was only saying that on purpose just to spite them and that his smoking wasn't truly something that bothered me. She said that him smoking outdoors wouldn't affect me in any way, and that I was being petty by telling him not to do it as a retaliation to her asking me to not drink.

I tell her that the smoking was actually something that bothered me for a while but I didn't really get the right opportunity to bring it up, and I also didn't want to feel like I was imposing anything on anyone out of nowhere. She didn't really buy it, and the conversation eventually morphed into her telling me that I didn't respect her beliefs, that I expected tolerance from her but I wasn't willing to do the same....So I flipped it back to her and told her " So now me asking your fiancé not to smoke is unacceptable but you're allowed to tell people what to do? You're very entitled". She gets upset and ends the conversation. It's been a couple of days and we haven't talked since.

Now, since I want unbiased advice this is where I will admit where I went wrong in the past. I feel like this fight wasn't really about the alcohol or the smoking as much as it was about the unspoken resentment she harbored towards me, because in the past back when I was still fresh out of the religion, I wanted to feel validated and accepted so when we'd all get together me and the others in the group would poke fun at some of the scriptures in islam and just talk shit about the religion in general. I guess that made her feel a bit alienated and marginalised.

Am I in the wrong?

Posted Oct 8, 2023, 5:06 PM UTC

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