Skip to main content

4 Steps to Loosen the Grip of Peer Pressure

Imagine you’re cheering your team at a sports event, in a huge open-air auditorium holding tens of thousands of people.

You’re wearing your team’s green colors and waving their green flag excitedly. Then you look around you and notice that you’re the only one wearing green and waving a green flag.

Everyone around you is wearing red and staring at you, frowning. Suddenly, all the excitement drains out of you. You lower your flag, feeling extremely awkward and nervous, and a strong urge to escape.

It’s always easy to go with the flow, and hard and stressful to swim upstream, to be the odd one out. Most people decide to do the first.

Peer pressure is a very strong force. If you are a young Muslim living in the West, and you see almost everyone from your generation going against Islamic principles, even ridiculing them, then it’s hard not to lose your Muslim identity.  

But there are steps you can take to loosen the pull of peer pressure on your mind.

Step 1: Think

Sometimes, while walking down a busy road, you walk in the steps of the person right in front of you. But then the person takes a left turn, and you, ruminating over some past event or future plan, follow him, though your destination lies in the opposite direction.

Why?

Because your mind is too busy to think where you’re going, and so you just go with the flow.

That’s why Allah Almighty asks:

So where are you going? (Quran, 81:26)

Do you know where you’re going? Or are you just following the general direction mindlessly?

Mental laziness is a common human weakness. We’d rather go with the general opinion than take the trouble of using our brains. That’s why Allah tells us repeatedly in the Quran to reflect, ponder, and think.

In fact, Allah Almighty compares those who do not think with livestock. (25:44) A sheep follows its herd mindlessly; it doesn’t use its brains to find out how to choose the greenest and safest fields.

So step one for loosening peer pressure’s hold is: Don’t be like livestock. Utilize the advanced thinking organ Allah has gifted you.  

Step 2: Look Through the Quranic Lens

Even if we choose to think and ponder, external influences affect our thinking processes and can make it warped.

How do you correct your thinking? By looking through the lens of the Quran. Build a strong connection with the Quran, because it’s the friend and guide that helps you think clearly. It teaches you how to use your mind unbiased. Allah calls the Quran ‘light’, because it sheds light on the truth and clears away prejudices and confusion.

Step 3: Surround Yourself with Righteous Companions

There’s a very famous experiment that every Psychology 101 student knows about. The experimenter, Asch, lied to each participant that he was going to have a vision test. A group of Asch’s confederates pretended to be coparticipants. Asch showed them the following picture and asked which line in the second picture matches the one in the first:

As you can see, the answer is very obvious. But the fake participants (stooges) all chose a wrong answer on purpose. The real goal of the experiment was to count how many times the real participant chose the wrong answer to conform with everyone else.  

Asch found out that, in twelve trials, 75% people went with the wrong answer at least once, and 32% gave wrong answers in every trial. Interestingly, this number plummeted from 32% to 5% if only one fake participant went against the group and gave the right answer.

That proves the power of having even one likeminded companion in combating peer pressure.

The Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) compared a good friend and a bad one with a perfume seller and a blower of bellows, respectively. Even if you don’t buy perfume or use the bellows, just coming in touch with the person will leave a scent, or soot, on you. (Bukhari 5534)

Where to Find Good Friends?

But how do you know which friends are good? You’ll find out by following steps one and two mentioned above.

A man who had killed a hundred people went to a scholar and asked if he could repent. The scholar advised him to leave his evil town and migrate to another town.

There you will find people devoted to prayer and worship of Allah, he said. “Join them in worship.” (Bukhari and Muslim)

You live in 2020. You don’t need to physically migrate to another town. All you need is virtual migration.

Apps like Muslim Central can provide you with the virtual company of scholars. Websites like ours share thoughts of practising Muslims from all over the world. There are even virtual educational institutions offering degrees in Islamic studies. And there are thousands and thousands of Islamic books you can order online.

Also, Islamic institutions in the West (such as Al-Kauthar and Al-Salam Institute in UK and Bayyinah Institute in the USA) arrange seminars, bootcamps, retreats and tours where you come in touch with practising Muslim peers.

Try to connect with the Muslim youth around you. Hang out together and offer prayers together, for, as the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) said:

The wolf eats up a solitary sheep that stays far from the flock. (Abu Dawud)

Step 4: Increase Exposure to Nature

Humans aren’t the only creation of Allah. There are billions of other kinds of beings all around you. And, what’s more, all these beings are Muslims (submitters to Allah).

Do you not realize that everything in the heavens and earth submits to God: the sun, the moon, the stars, the mountains, the trees, and the animals? So do many human beings, though for many others punishment is well deserved. (22:18)

If you expand your definition of ‘peer’ to everything in creation, the peer pressure from the comparatively few disobedient human beings will seem negligible.

References and Further Reading:

https://www.simplypsychology.org/asch-conformity.html

https://aboutislam.net/reading-islam/living-islam/new-muslims-avoid-satans-traps/

The post 4 Steps to Loosen the Grip of Peer Pressure appeared first on About Islam.



source https://aboutislam.net/reading-islam/living-islam/4-steps-to-loosen-the-grip-of-peer-pressure/
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

List of Times and Places Where Dua is Accepted

A short reminder regarding the recommended times of dua . And I think what you need to know here is that the recommended times of dua or recommended things that can cause your dua to be accepted, can be divided into two sort of large groups: Am I Good Enough to Make Dua for Myself? Situations where your dua is accepted. Times where your dua is accepted So I’m going to very briefly mention them one after the other as much as possible. As for situations where your dua has been accepted: – The person who has been wronged or oppressed . – A person who finds themselves in severe difficulty after a calamity has struck. – The person who is traveling. – Someone who is fasting. – The one who is reciting the Quran or has just recited the Quran – Someone who is performing Hajj or Umrah or jihad. – The one who is making dua for someone in their absence . Because we know that when you make dua for someone in his absence an angel says: “ Ameen and to you”. – A person...
Post a Comment
Read More »

Derechos de Las Mujeres en Islam

Durante el Tiempo del Profeta (la paz sea con él) Veamos cómo fueron tratadas las mujeres de todo el mundo durante la época del Profeta (la paz sea con él). En la Europa del siglo VIII, la religión principal era el catolicismo y durante este tiempo debatían si las mujeres tenían alma. Dijeron que las mujeres eran impuras y que no tenían derecho a la herencia. A las mujeres tampoco se les permitía tocar la Biblia. No era como ahora en el Islam, donde ellas no pueden tocar el Corán durante la menstruación, pero a las mujeres en la Europa del siglo VIII nunca se les permitió tocar la Biblia. En China e India, fueron quemadas vivas cuando murieron sus maridos. En Arabia Saudita practicaron infanticidio femenino en el que, si nacía una niña, la enterrarían viva. Si el marido de una mujer muere, un miembro de su familia se unirá a ella para demostrar que ahora es de su propiedad. Mujeres en el Islam Con el Islam llegó una nueva era para las mujeres. En el Islam, las mujeres tienen la...
Post a Comment
Read More »

Ghuraba (The Strangers): Nasheed with English Subtitles

Islam began as something strange, and it shall return to being something strange, so give glad tidings the strangers. (Sahih Muslim 145) This famous nasheed has many versions; this one is from Muhammad al-Salman and has the subtitles in English embedded. [We are] strangers and we do not bow the foreheads to anyone besides Allah  […] Transliteration to help in the pronounciation:  Ghurabaa’ wa li ghairillaahi laa nahnil jibaa Aisha Stacey  wrote in an article for Aboutislam.net : “I think that many of you would agree that being Muslim in the 21st century makes you well acquainted with being strange. It might even be a metaphor for random, as in you have been randomly selected. […] many converts to Islam will tell you about feeling as if they were strangers, before finding Islam. They will speak of feeling that they belonged somewhere else that their lives were just slightly off center. They often speak about a vague sense of knowing they were not like everyone else...
Post a Comment
Read More »