Friend or Foe?

Remember the last time you watched a movie that you know nothing about except from the critics' comments about it in the newspaper? Do you think what the critics said have any effect on your view about the movie?  No?......Think again.

We are constantly being influenced by our environment whether we realise it or not. Take the example mentioned above. If the critics would have give negative feedbacks about the movie, we would have probably agree to the same thing too,especially if he/she is a renowned critic. You don't even need to watch the trailer but you already have a mindset about the movie before you step inside the cinema. For that reason, film producers are cautious of critics. It could end up as movie hits or it could end up....nowhere.

An experiment was conducted where volunteers were given an unpleasant  sour orange juice but beforehand, the volunteers were shown advertisements about the  drink conveying the message that 'it is refreshing'. The result was, most of them agree with the ads when they were asked by the experimenter. However this only works to a certain extent. You can't give the volunteers oranges and try to convince them via ads that it is a baboon...but you can try though.

Another experiment was conducted where a number of volunteers was blindfolded. Each of these volunteers were given Pepsi-Cola and Coca-cola drinks. Then, the experimenter asked which tastes better and most of them answered Pepsi-Cola. The experiment was repeated but this time the volunteers were not blindfolded. When the experimenter asked the question majority opt for Coca-cola.

What I am trying to conclude here is that we are constantly being influenced and on top of that, we are easily influenced. This supports the statement "whoever controls the media,controls the world". This is on a large scale but when we focus down to individuals ,friends is the first word to come when we  talk about influence. For that reason there is hikmah ( wisdom ) when the Prophet reminded us about choosing our friends. They influence us more than what we realise.

I believe that we also need to struggle to spread the words of Islam via media like making islamic movies, t-shirts, animation are among the examples.



Below are one of the islamic videos.