The Difference Between Permissible Backbiting and Forbidden Backbiting

The Shaykh : I am afraid of falling into impermissible backbiting, because there is permissible backbiting. Did you hear this statement in your time?

The questioner : By Allah, even I was going to ask you this question.

The Shaykh : Did you hear?

The questioner : I did not hear.

The Shaykh : You were going to ask me, I mean.

The questioner : I was going to ask you, but it was not written on the paper, that is the correct thing.

The Shaykh : Ah, good, so now we have exposed you.

The questioner : May Allah reward you.

The Shaykh : What do you think, Professor Mashhur, about this exposure?
Al-Halabi : Our Shaykh, let it be al-jarh wa al-ta'dil (the critique and vindication of narrators).

The Shaykh : And it is so, and therefore I will hear the words of the scholars who said:
"Censure is not backbiting in six cases: the aggrieved, the one who identifies, and the one who warns,
the one who openly commits open sinfulness, the one seeking a ruling, and the one seeking help in removing a wrong."
The Shaykh: These six things, if you memorize them, you have gathered the Islamic jurisprudence on the issue of backbiting, because many people, your neighbor comes and asks you, "I want to partner with so-and-so, what do you think, do you advise me to partner with him?" By Allah, all people have good and blessing in them, and you know that there is no blessing in him, but you are afraid of backbiting him, and backbiting is forbidden because the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) said the truth:

The questioner : With what is in him?

The Shaykh : Yes,

The questioner : Not with what he dislikes?

The Shaykh : But if you said what is not in him, then you have slandered him. So the things you heard just now, contained in the two verses, are backbiting because you mention your brother with what he dislikes. At that point, we say it is forbidden and not permissible? No, there are exceptions, with much evidence from the Book and the Sunnah, some of it here and some of it there. The point is, we will give just one example because time has run out. The well-known hadith that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) was approached by a woman who said, "O Messenger of Allah, Abu Sufyan is a stingy man." Is "stingy" backbiting or not backbiting?

The questioner : Backbiting, of course.

The Shaykh : Backbiting. So she is backbiting her husband in front of the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him). If this question had occurred in front of a man from the scrupulous scholars, and I do not say the scrupulous, he would say to her, "Be quiet, do not backbite your husband, he is your husband, and so on." The Messenger's (peace and blessings be upon him) position was not that; he listened to her. She said, "My husband is a stingy man, should I take from his wealth what suffices me and my children?" He said: This is the proof for the poet's line: "and the one seeking a ruling." She did not come to backbite her husband at the Messenger's (peace and blessings be upon him) place; she came to seek a ruling, and seeking a ruling requires that you describe the man with what is in him. So she said of her husband, "Stingy, miserly, he does not give me the maintenance that is obligatory for me and my children from him." He said, "Take," to the end of the hadith. So all these exceptions are permissible, and indeed may be obligatory. When your friend comes and asks you, "I want to partner with so-and-so," and you know he is a traitor, a liar, a deceiver, who eats his partner's money, you must say to him, "Beware of him and him." This is from the category of warning mentioned in the poem. And perhaps this is sufficient, and praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds.

Another questioner : He says in the introduction to the methodology of critique in the sciences of hadith, he says that what indicates this unique scholar's knowledge is the multitude of references he cited in this book, in the book "The Methodology of Critique in the Sciences of Hadith."
Al-Halabi : Our Shaykh, all the scrupulousness of these scrupulous people, you mentioned once the expression "cold scrupulousness," I saw it from the words of Imam Ahmad.

The Shaykh : What Allah willed.
Al-Halabi : Yes, by Allah, there was a session of knowledge, and a benefit passed in the session, so a man came to ask Imam Ahmad for permission, he said, "I use the inkwell," he said, "This is cold scrupulousness."

The Shaykh : May Allah have mercy on him.