What are the matters in which backbiting is permissible?
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
Question:
May Allah reward you with good, and may He do you good. What are the matters in which backbiting is permissible?
Answer:
Backbiting is not permissible except out of dire necessity, such as the complainant who comes to the judge to complain of a man’s aggression against him, his injustice toward him, that he is an oppressor, and that he consumes rights. Or the advisor who is consulted about a person regarding his marriage or partnership; in that case, the advisor points out the defects in that person, not for the sake of backbiting, but for the sake of advising the one who consulted him. Likewise, in the case of enjoining good and forbidding evil, one points out what has occurred from some of the people who are open in their sins and careless, in order to deter them and to establish the hudud (fixed Qur'anic punishments) upon them.
May Allah reward you with good, and may He do you good. What are the matters in which backbiting is permissible?
Answer:
Backbiting is not permissible except out of dire necessity, such as the complainant who comes to the judge to complain of a man’s aggression against him, his injustice toward him, that he is an oppressor, and that he consumes rights. Or the advisor who is consulted about a person regarding his marriage or partnership; in that case, the advisor points out the defects in that person, not for the sake of backbiting, but for the sake of advising the one who consulted him. Likewise, in the case of enjoining good and forbidding evil, one points out what has occurred from some of the people who are open in their sins and careless, in order to deter them and to establish the hudud (fixed Qur'anic punishments) upon them.
Source
قناة «العلامة الدكتور صالح الفوزان»، ما هي الأمور التي تباح فيها الغيبة؟ الشيخ صالح بن فوزان الفوزان — youtube.com
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.