Phenomena of Love, Nafs and Illicit Sexual Behaviors Amongst Teenagers in South Malaysia

Abstract

This research is to investigate the phenomena of love and ‘nafs’ amongst Malaysian teenagers involved in sexual deviance. This is a correlational research based on Imam Ghazali and Love theories. A total of 1000 respondents were selected through random sampling. Questionnaires containing items on Love Styles (Sidek,1998) and ‘Nafs’ (Faizah and Norshelida, 2011) were employed as the research instruments. Results based on descriptive analyses indicated that the logical love style dominated the respondents’ love style (M=3.64) followed by friendship love (M=3.54), romantic love (M=3.10) and sacrificial love (M=3.09). Findings also showed that majority of the respondents were at the ‘nafs mulhimah’ stage in terms of sexual activity, dominated by holding hands (62.4%), followed by hugging (37.1%), kissing (34.3%), caressing (23.6%), oral sex / masturbating (18.8%) and illicit sex (8.7%). The results also show that the majority of teenagers who were involved in illicit sex were females (65.6%), while 34.6% were males. Most teenagers involved in illicit sex come from family backgrounds with parents who were self employed (33.33%) with an average monthly income of RM 1000.00. Inferential analyses results revealed that romantic love (ß= 0.29, p=0.00), friendship love (ß=-0.94, p=0.011), ‘nafs amarah’ (ß=0.31, p=0.00), ‘nafs lawammah’ (ß=0.18, p=0.00)and ‘nafs mulhimah’ (ß=-0.77, p=0.00) as the significant predictors of sexual deviance.