Understanding what ‘hedonism’ means to youth

Talking about ‘hedonism’, what comes across your mind in the first place?

According to Cambridge Dictionary it means living and behaving in ways that you get as much pleasure out of life as possible. It is based on a belief that the most important thing in life is to enjoy yourself.

Hedonism has its influence mostly on youth. Why must youth be the main target? It is because at this age, self-gratification, satisfaction and entertainment have the most influence. Plus, the new generation has an important role in a country. If they succeed in building an excellent generation it would mean the country will make their way to success in the future. But if the youth in that country inherited bad behaviour, it would only lead the country to face failure.

Social Media

Instagram is among popular social media that has been used by teenagers. As we noticed, most business nowadays have their own account to advertise their products such as scarfs, clothes or even special services that they serve. It is actually good because they make effort to make money, at the same time to ease people who are busy and do not have enough time to go out and buy the things that they need. But when they are obsessed at gaining profit just to compete with others, they tend to cheat their customers, such when they already received the money, they do not send the item that has been ordered by their customers.

Entertainment

As we can see, nowadays we live a life that is filled with entertainment such as music. Sometimes people use to know a lot about the background of their favourite artistes compared to knowing their prophet (PBUH). They are willing to pay the highest price when their favourite artistes are having performance in their country to buy the ticket for the reason to look at them closer. When listening to music, they overlook and sometimes missed their daily prayers. Some of them also registered themselves to be in reality show right after they have finished their school life. As we know at this age, they should gain a lot of knowledge for future use and need to pursue their studies in university or college to better themselves. Unfortunately, they love to gain popularity because it may achieve satisfaction in life.

Food

Food is a basic need in human life. Food have many benefits to our body. It helps us to increase the body’s immunity system, gives us energy and others. However, without us realising, food can also lead someone to become a hedonist. As we can see youth nowadays, especially those who are still studying in the university or perhaps college, sometimes they spend a lot of money eating at luxurious place to make them look sophisticated in the eyes of their friends in order to achieve self pleasure without concern for their affordability of spending the money.

To conclude, in the perspective of Islam, Allah has put guidelines for us to live in this life. Islam does not reject every ideology that exists in this world as long as it is acceptable in Islam. But we must go against this ideology because hedonism promotes free thinking.

Hedonism encourages people to do things based on their own desires without knowing what is acceptable and prohibited by our religion and it is going against our two important sources that we have to follow which is Quran and Sunnah. If this thing becomes worse, eventually it may lead the Muslims to go against their own religion.  Lets follow the sunnah to be moderate!***

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