Cases in which backbiting is permissible and the saying, "Sit with us and let us backbite"
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Question:
He asks: What are the cases in which backbiting is permissible, and what is your opinion of the statement made by some people: "Let us sit together and backbite for an hour in order to respond to the one who disagrees with us and label him an innovator"?
Answer:
This is of no benefit. Your sitting and backbiting about a person is of no benefit. This is what the scholars of hadith do when they study the chains of narration, examine the narrators, and either reject the one who has been criticized or weaken his narration, while authenticating the authentic ones. This is in the stronger interest. This is specific to the great hadith scholars in the chains of hadith, where they distinguish between them to preserve the Sunnah. As for taking speech about people as a matter of desire or seeking out faults, this is not permissible.
He asks: What are the cases in which backbiting is permissible, and what is your opinion of the statement made by some people: "Let us sit together and backbite for an hour in order to respond to the one who disagrees with us and label him an innovator"?
Answer:
This is of no benefit. Your sitting and backbiting about a person is of no benefit. This is what the scholars of hadith do when they study the chains of narration, examine the narrators, and either reject the one who has been criticized or weaken his narration, while authenticating the authentic ones. This is in the stronger interest. This is specific to the great hadith scholars in the chains of hadith, where they distinguish between them to preserve the Sunnah. As for taking speech about people as a matter of desire or seeking out faults, this is not permissible.
Source
لقاء مع المعلمين بالطائف 1434هـ — alfawzan.live (36:39)
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.