It is they who cover up your flaws...

It is they who cover up your flaws, and regard your favours, and give when you need, and chatter in silence, and console in misfortunes, and save from troubles, and do not misguide or disappoint in calamities, and prefer in litigation” By those golden words, the Imam has assigned the Islamic duties of friendship that obligate mutual supervision, amiability, and cooperation among friends.

Friendship leads to the acquisition of customs and the interaction with the friends’ ethics, tendencies, and trends. Therefore, Islam has warned against befriending morally and mentally defective individuals. Imam Ali (PBUH), the great educator, instructs his son Imam Al-Hasan (PBUH): “O son! Beware of associating with the idiot. They harm when they intend to benefit. Beware of associating with the misers. They deprive you of the very things that you need.

Beware of associating with the licentious. They vend you with valueless. Beware of associating with the liars. They look like a mirage that shows the remote as close and the close as remote.” Many damages that cause the loss of the behavioural balance result in associating with such individuals. The reference books of Hadith are full of many Prophetic and Imamic sayings regarding the qualities and influences of friends.

The Prophet (PBUH&HP) says, “Man pursues his friend’s religion.” The youth that accepts their religion and doctrine are advised to be careful of the individuals that are defective morally and behaviorally since such ones lead to sinning and depravity. The youth should also avoid those who bear weak principles, such as existentialism and the like, that call for disintegration and the prevalence of the jungle law.

Unfortunately, many of those deviants who do not possess any Islamic or national conscience, and ignore any upright social purport have affected Islamic society. Hence, they worked poisonously for dishonoring this nation’s social and spiritual divines and values. The faithful youth should be careful of such individuals and should never associate with them so that they would not be misguided.

The Environment in the Present Ages Modern social surroundings have attained a great scale of merging and similarity because of the new means of communication that approximated the nations and peoples by mutual transference of habits and traditions. This has naturally created the unprecedented extensive reciprocity of ideas. Most people then participated in the same tendencies, traditions, and habits.