Do you think you have peer pressure? Do you really think that what you’re dealing with is something so enormous and something so unbelievable, there’s no limit behind it?

Your own history, meaning being a Muslim, teaches you exactly what peer pressure is all about.

Lessons from Prophet Abraham

There is one man that at the tender age of 13 years old, who walks out in front of his entire community and says to everybody:

 “Worship Allah, say la ilaha illa Allah.”

 Every single person says:

“No! We don’t care, we don’t want to listen to you.”

 So, he goes now to his own father and he says:

 “Oh my father, would you believe in one God?”

The father says:

 “If you continue to do this, I’m going to have you removed from this community, and your life also will be removed from this world.”

This is a special person. He says to the father:

“Oh my father I am going to continue to ask Allah to forgive you.”

I’m talking about Prophet Abraham (peace be upon him).

 Now, I want you to just look at the image, just look as though there’s a play unfolding in front of you: Abraham (peace be upon him) is captured, and they build a fire to burn him…

Some scholars said that fire was so hot and so high that the birds flying in the sky would die from the heat of that fire.

What kind of pressure would that be? At the end he just still says la ilaha illa Allah. I’m going to stick to what I have.

 Imagine if you really think that you’re dealing with peer pressure, you’ve got to understand who you are.

The Challenge of Identity

One of the challenges that our youth face is that they lose their Muslim identity; they’re not proud of being Muslim anymore.

Sometimes you’ll see your son or daughter would like to adopt something that is not allowed in Islam and they’d say, “I would love to do that, but I can’t because I have a strictly religion called Islam…”

It’s as if they’re just not proud anymore, they’re just doing it just because they’ve been forced into it.

If you don’t love who you are, then this is the first problem that you may lose the identity of who you are. And this is why the scholars say that one of the most effective ways to preserve who you are as a human being is to love and be content of what you are.

Be content that you’re a Muslim. Be content that you’re human being, that you’re healthy…

If you’re content and every single day you’re happy, Allah says:

 I guarantee him a good life. (Quran 16: 97)

Note about the identity crisis that our youth go through. What is our identity? Our identity is just one word: Muslim.

 It doesn’t matter who we are, it doesn’t matter what group you belong to… Allah Himself gives us our identity and tells us who we are.