What is peer pressure?

Remember there are problems you feel inside your heart, which are affecting your heart. All these problems are symptoms or products of another problem, which is peer pressure, which creates other problems. Peer pressure is when a group of friends pressure someone to do something he doesn’t want to or should not do but has some desire to do, and when everyone is doing it he ends up doing it, peer pressure can be halal and haraam at the same time.

 Prophet Muhammad (ﷺ) said that a Muslim should not be a immaa, it is when people are good you are good and when people are bad you are bad, you are with the people, you do what they do, if they jump off the cliff so do you etc, also it is like being a twig in the water it goes where the water goes or a leaf in the wind which moves along with the wind, Prophet (ﷺ) said a Muslim should not be like immaa so if this is peer pressure, moving around according to your peers blindly, it is wrong, you can’t think for yourself, you don’t have a mind of your own because that is very bad because if you are with group of people who are very bad then you can end up in a lot of trouble.

Prophet (ﷺ) also said,

“whoever imitates a people is like them”[1]

He is one of them so this is not a good state to be in. A Muslim should have his or her own personality because each one of us has to answer to Allah, your friends from your peer group cannot answer for you in front of Allah, you have to answer for yourself, that’s why being immaa and imitating people is no good, unless they are good people, but most of the time we are not imitating good people.

Peer pressure is usually created because of the media and what is portrayed on the television and movies.

Reference:

[1] [Sunan Abi Dawud (4031)]