Topic: The Backbiter

[Khalil]

The Qur’an reproaches the backbiter with six reproaches in the verse:

Would any among you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother?

and forbids him to commit this sin with six degrees of severity. When the verse is directed to those persons actually engaged in backbiting, its meaning is the following.

As is well-known, the hamza at the beginning of the verse has an interrogative sense. This interrogative sense penetrates all the words of the verse like water, so that each word acquires an additional meaning. Thus the first word asks, with its hamza: “Is it that you have no intelligence capable of discrimination, so that you fail to perceive the ugliness of this thing?”

The second word like asks: “Is your heart, the seat of love and hatred, so corrupted that it loves the most repugnant of things?”

The third word any among you asks: “What befell your sense of social and civilized responsibility that you are able to accept something poisonous to social life?”

The fourth word to eat the flesh asks: “What has befallen your sense of humanity that you are tearing your friend apart with your fangs like a wild animal?”

The fifth word of his brother asks: “Do you have no fellow-feeling, no sense of kinship, that you are able to sink your teeth into some wretch who is tied to you by numerous links of brotherhood? Do you have no intelligence that you are able to bite into your own limbs with your own teeth, in such lunatic fashion?”

The sixth word dead asks: “Where is your conscience? Is your nature so corrupt that you abandon all respect and act so repugnantly as to consume your brother’s flesh?”

According then to the total sense of the verse, as well as the indications of each of its words, slander and backbiting are repugnant to the intelligence and the heart, to humanity and conscience, to nature and social consciousness.

You see then that the verse condemns backbiting in six miraculous degrees and restrains men from it in six miraculous ways. Backbiting is the vile weapon most commonly used by the people of enmity, envy, and obstinacy, and the self-respecting will never stoop to employing so unclean a weapon. Some celebrated person once said: “I never stoop to vexing my enemy with backbiting, for backbiting is the weapon of the weak, the low, and the vile.”

Backbiting consists of saying that which would be a cause of dislike and vexation to the person in question if he were to be present and hear it. Even if what is said is true, it is still backbiting. If it is a lie, then it is both backbiting and slander and a doubly loathsome sin.

Backbiting can be permissible in a few special instances:

First: If a complaint be presented to some official, so that with his help evil be removed and justice restored.

Second: If a person contemplating co-operation with another comes to seek your advice, and you say to him, purely for the sake of his benefit and to advise him correctly, without any self-interest: “Do not co-operate with him; it will be to your disadvantage.”

Third: If the purpose is not to expose someone to disgrace and notoriety, but simply to make people aware, and one says: “That foolish, confused man went to such-and-such a place.”

Fourth: If the subject of backbiting is an open and unashamed sinner; is not troubled by evil, but on the contrary takes pride in the sins he commits; finds pleasure in his wrongdoing; and unhesitatingly sins in the most evident fashion.

In these particular cases, backbiting may be permissible, if it be done without self-interest and purely for the sake of truth and communal welfare. But apart from them, it is like a fire that consumes good deeds like a flame eating up wood.

If one has engaged in backbiting, or willingly listened to it, one should say: “O God, forgive me and him concerning whom I spoke ill,” and say to the subject of backbiting, whenever one meets him: “Forgive me.”

The Enduring One, He is the Enduring One!

S a i d N u r s i

(Conclusion of the 22nd Word, Risale-i Nur Collection)

[Seeker of Truth]

Salaam ^Alaykum Khalil,

there has been a few important matters missed in this article,

When the Prophet spoke about gossip (ghibah), he gave a very specific definition. In a hadith related by Muslim, Abu Dawud, an-Nasa'iyy, and at-Tirmidhiyy, from the route of Abu Hurayrah, the Messenger, when asked about gossip (ghibah), said:





The Prophet defined gossip (ghibah) as mentioning something about your Muslim brother that he hates. The Prophet was asked, "What if that thing I mentioned was something truthful about him?" The Prophet said, "If it was in him, then you have committed gossip (ghibah), and if it was not in him, then you have committed al-buhtan"--which is a sin more enormous than gossip (ghibah).


There are certain cases the scholars of Islam excluded from being a sinful gossip (ghibah). These are classified into six categories, and one would not be sinful for committing gossip (ghibah) if his case fell into one of these six:

1. To go to the Muslim judge or one with jurisdiction to tell him about an injustice done to him in order to help him take his right.

2. To talk about a person’s sins that he hates mentioned, in order to seek help in preventing the person from continuing their sins. Hence, one is not sinful if he knows a Muslim who is committing a particular sin, and informs another of that matter so that the latter will help the sinful Muslim refrain from committing those sins.

However, be advised here of a very fine line: Many times a person lets loose his grudges against another to break him and seek revenge. Still, this person bluffs himself by claiming his intention is to help that person clear himself of his sin. In such a case, one does not escape the sin of gossip (ghibah).

3. To tell the mufti about someone else’s sin that he hates mentioned for the purpose of seeking the judgment of that particular matter. For example, for a man to tell the mufti his wife leaves the house against his permission does not make him sinful if one is seeking the religious judgment on that matter. However, the scholars said in such a case, one is recommended not to mention names, but to phrase the question in the third person. For example, to say: "What is the judgment according to the Religion if one's wife left the house against her husband’s permission?"

4. To depict a person with one of his attributes that he hates mentioned with the purpose of identifying him. For example, it is allowed for someone to tell his son to go and give some money to ‘the one-legged man next door,’ to clarify for the son exactly which man is meant.

5. To tell about another person’s sins which he himself openly declares. Hence, it is not sinful for one to tell about a person who himself declares he drinks alcohol or does so publicly.

6. To warn other Muslims against a sinner. This is a very important issue. It is an obligation on us to warn against those who cheat Muslims. If, for example, one knows of a waylayer targeting a route along which Muslims intend to travel, one would be sinful if he kept silent from warning the Muslims of this, thereby letting them fall prey to the waylayer. Moreover, it is more of an obligation to warn against those who cheat Muslims in their Religion than to warn against those who cheat in the worldly matters. If one knows of anyone who cheats the Muslims in their Religion, by falsely claiming to be knowledgeable, teaching them blasphemy, and/or giving them answers to Islamic questions that are incorrect--then it is an obligation to warn the Muslims against them.

At the time of our Master ^Umar Ibnul-Khattab, a man came to him and told him: "In the Era of Ignorance, I buried my daughter alive, however, at the last moment I took her out. Then Islam spread, and we became Muslims. Time passed, and then this daughter of mine fornicated and later attempted to commit suicide by slitting her wrists. Afterwards she repented a valid repentance. Some people asked me for her hand in marriage. I told them her story so that I would not cheat them about my daughter." ^Umar scolded that man and told him: "You have spread that which Allah ordered covered about your daughter. Let me warn you: If you tell anyone about this story again, I shall punish you in a manner that will make you an example for all the people."

From this story we understand that once a Muslim repents from his sins, it is unlawful to mention these sins about him. Therefore, the prevailing precept for the person must always be his prevailing situation.