The Role and Responsibilities of Youth in Islam

Youth is considered to be the backbone of any nation. The level of moral development, civilization and consolidation of authority and potency depends on the morality of its youth. It can be said that nations survive till their ethics live. The question of youth and Islam at present stems from the overwhelming demographic weight of youth and their relatively recent invasion into the public domain, as well as a wave of Islamic revivalism throughout the world. For any society and its future the youth plays vital and integral role both for progress and decline. The reason is that youth can make the future dark or bright through their role as individuals and as active members of society. This paper draws on lively focus group narratives of young Muslims to explore the interactive presentation of Islamic selves. By bringing together young people who practice Islam in different ways, this paper offers a deeper insight into how claims to a universal identity are actively constructed and contested through particular social relationships and interactions in specific structural contexts. The first part of the paper presents introduction of the whole study. Second part gives description about the categories of youth including; pious, deviated and confused. In third part importance of youth in Islam has been highlighted. Fourth part presents social, moral, political situation of Muslim societies in contemporary time. Fifth part gives description of impact of moral, social, and political situation on the minds of young people. Discussion concludes with the responsibilities of youth which is followed by findings and conclusion of the whole discussion. In so doing, the paper takes up recent calls for more research on the personal meaning of Islam as religion for Muslim youth

Social Support As Determinant of Social Isolation and Loneliness Among Senior Citizens

The present research is planned to find out the relationship between social support, social isolation and loneliness among older adults. Factors like gender, age, residential status (i.e. rural and urban), marital status, family system, socio economic status, and education were also taken into consideration. The study was carried out in two Phases. First Phase was further comprised of two steps. In first step of Phase-I, two scales of the present study i.e. 6-Item (short) De Jong Gierveld Loneliness Scale (1985) and 6-item (short) scale developed by Hawthorne (2006) was used in order to assess social isolation. These scales were translated into Urdu language in order to derive more natural responses from the participants. Standardized back translation procedure was used for the translation of the measures. Moreover, the Urdu version of Social Support Scale developed by Malik (2002) was also used in current study. Second step of Phase-I was accounted for the assurance of psychometric soundness of the scales. A sample of 75 older adults, conveniently approached, was used to ensure the alpha reliabilities along with other descriptive analyses. Phase-II of the present study was planned for hypotheses testing. Purposive convenient sampling technique was used to draw the sample of 500 older adults from both urban and rural areas of the various districts of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. An appropriate statistical analysis according to the new version of SPSS was used to draw conclusions. The age of the sample ranged from 60 to 90 years (M = 67.59, SD = 7.54). Alpha coefficients, for the all variable were computed, which ranged between. 60 for social loneliness to. 96 for social support total scale. This indicates that reliabilities are found to be satisfactory for various scales of the study. Linear regression analysis revealed that overall social support is significant negative predictor of social loneliness, emotional loneliness, overall loneliness, and social isolation. In order to examine the effect of the sub constructs of social support on outcome variables the multiple regression analysis was computed which demonstrated instrumental support and tangible aid as significant negative predictors of social isolation. Emotional support and social network support were found to be the significant predictors of social loneliness, emotional loneliness, overall loneliness, and social isolation, whereas esteem support negatively predicted social loneliness, emotional loneliness, and social isolation. Significant gender differences were found on social support and its sub constructs, whereas significant difference on all study variables were also observed for x residential status (i.e. urban or rural), age, and socio economic status. Marital status further demonstrated significant difference on emotional loneliness, overall loneliness, social isolation, and various constructs of social support. Limitations of the present study, suggestions for future empirical endeavors, and both practical as well as theoretical implications of current study have also been discussed.