Repentece to Allah after lying to non-muslims

[Aishath]

two years ago I lied to a lot of my non-muslim friends about morally wrong things as well. I pretended that my grandfather had passed away when he is indeed alive insha Allah amongst other things such lies. I did these things to get attention from people and it worked. However, I feel so bad about all of this and want to repent to Allah and I have already done so and prayed the two rakats and am making a conscience effort to not utter a single word of lie from my tongue again. My question is, do I need to confess all these lies to my non-muslim friends in order for my repentence to be accepted by Allah? Or since I did not take any money from them etc, is it okay for me to repent to God but then never bring up those lies ever again with these people?

I live with most of these girls and for me to tell them about it now is just going to cause inconveniences and I also doubt that any of them are going to forgive me. I know they will think badly of me (but I really hope they don't think badly of Islam). Please advise me on what I can do. I will be living with them for one more year but over time, we have all got to become really close friends (even though the friendships weren't started off based on the lie).

 

[marwen]

Other members can give you a better advice than me, but I can tell you what I think about this :

* In Islam, lying is Haram (forbidden), it doesn't matter if those who we lied to are muslims or non muslims. That means if you lied, then you should repent to Allah and ask forgiveness from him, and He will forgive you insha'Allah.

* But, Islam doesn't tell you to confess about your lies to the people you lied to in all the cases. There is 2 conditions where you should confess about your lies to those who you lied to :

1) if the persons you lied to are somehow affected by your lies : you took money or benefits from them by lying to them, or you made them make some extra effort without reason, or you caused them some loss. So you should tell them the truth and ask them to forgive you about their loss.

2) if the persons you lied to will probably discover your lies and this will make them upset because you didn't tell them the truth. And this may destroy your relationship with them and this may cause you many problems. In that case also, you should anticipate and tell them the truth before they discover it by themselves.

But, if we're not in anyone of these tow situations, i.e : our lies in the past did not affect other people, and will not affect our future, then repenting to Allah will be enough insha'Allah, and no need to confess and expose our sins to others, because it will lead to other unneeded problems.

That's what I think about this probelm, WAllahu Aalam.