The ruling on saying "by your life" when it slips off the tongue
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
The questioner:
Honorable Shaykh, may Allah grant you success. He says: You mentioned, may Allah preserve you, that "by your life" is an oath
The Shaykh:
"for your life."
The questioner:
"For your life" is an oath.
The Shaykh:
It contains the lam of oath, yes.
The questioner:
And we find this in some poetic verses, so is it major shirk?
The Shaykh:
that slips off the tongue without the intention of swearing. If the wording of an oath slips off the tongue and one does not intend to swear, it is not an oath, just as the idle oath is, such as "no, by Allah" or "yes, by Allah." If he says it without intention, it becomes an idle oath.[Al-Baqarah 2:225] Yes.
Honorable Shaykh, may Allah grant you success. He says: You mentioned, may Allah preserve you, that "by your life" is an oath
The Shaykh:
"for your life."
The questioner:
"For your life" is an oath.
The Shaykh:
It contains the lam of oath, yes.
The questioner:
And we find this in some poetic verses, so is it major shirk?
The Shaykh:
that slips off the tongue without the intention of swearing. If the wording of an oath slips off the tongue and one does not intend to swear, it is not an oath, just as the idle oath is, such as "no, by Allah" or "yes, by Allah." If he says it without intention, it becomes an idle oath.
Allah does not impose blame upon you for what is unintentional in your oaths
لَّا يُؤَاخِذُكُمُ اللَّهُ بِاللَّغْوِ فِي أَيْمَانِكُمْ
Source
شرح إغاثة اللهفان من مصائد الشيطان لابن القيم، مقدمة الكتاب — islamhouse.com (49:48)
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.