Backbiting & its Evil Effects on Muslim Society

"And do not backbite one another. Would one of you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother? You would hate it." (Surah Al-Hujurat 49:12)

Few prohibitions in the Qur'an are put in language that vivid. The comparison is deliberate: it is meant to produce revulsion at something that otherwise feels harmless and even sociable.

What Counts

The Prophet ﷺ defined it when he was asked. Backbiting is mentioning your brother with what he would dislike. And when someone objected that it might be true, he answered that if it is true you have backbitten him, and if it is not, you have slandered him.

That definition closes the escape route most people use. The truth of the statement is not the question.

What the Booklet Covers

The ruling and its evidence. The narrow circumstances in which the scholars permit mentioning a person's faults — seeking a ruling, warning someone entering a transaction, seeking help against injustice — which are real exceptions and are routinely stretched past what they allow.

And the social argument the title points at: what happens to trust in a community where this is ordinary, and what it costs a person on the Day when his good deeds are transferred to those he spoke about.

Related Reading

• Slander — slander, treated in the same series
• Hindrances on the Path — evil talk among the failings that quietly do damage
• Book of Manners — the manners of speech, in full