Continuation of the Chapter on the Prohibition of Backbiting and the Command to Guard the Tongue: Allah the Exalted said

The reader: In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
All praise is due to Allah, Lord of the worlds, and may peace and blessings be upon our Prophet Muhammad, and upon his family and all his Companions.
He (may Allah have mercy on him) said: “The chapter on the prohibition of backbiting and the command to guard the tongue. Allah the Exalted said:

And do not pursue that of which you have no knowledge. Indeed, the hearing, the sight and the heart - about all those [one] will be questioned.

ولا تقف ما ليس لك به علم إن السمع والبصر والفؤاد كل أولئك كان عنه مسؤولًا

[Al-Isra 17:36]

And He said:

Man does not utter any word except that with him is an observer prepared [to record].

ما يلفظ من قول إلا لديه رقيب عتيد

[Qaf 50:18]

”.

The Shaykh : In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
This chapter, as mentioned previously, concerns the prohibition of backbiting and the obligation to guard the tongue. We have already discussed the first verse, where Allah the Exalted says: As for the second verse, it is the saying of Allah the Exalted: “Do not pursue” means: do not follow that of which you have no knowledge. This prohibition encompasses everything; anything of which you have no knowledge, do not follow it. Turn away from it and do not speak about it, for you are in danger. If this concerns what you attribute to Allah and His Messenger, it is forbidden and among the most severe of sins. If you say, for example, “Allah the Exalted said such and such,” when Allah did not say it, or if you interpret a verse according to your desires rather than what it indicates, you have said about Allah what you do not know. For this reason, it came in the hadith: It is not permissible for anyone to interpret a verse from the Book of Allah when he does not know its meaning, interpreting it only by guesswork and conjecture, because the matter is serious. If you interpret a verse to mean one of the meanings, you have testified that Allah intended such and such, and this is a danger, a great danger. Therefore, a person must be cautious about rushing into matters of which he has no knowledge, regarding the rulings of the Shari'ah and other matters, though this is more severe. Allah the Exalted coupled saying about Him without knowledge with shirk (associating partners with Allah), saying, Glorious and Exalted is He: Likewise, if you pursue that of which you have no knowledge regarding people, by reporting that a person said such and such when he did not say it—even if someone tells you that he said such and such—do not rely on this until you are certain, especially when people engage in much discussion of matters. In that case, one must be even more cautious, because when people engage in much discussion and gossip, they build a dome from a grain and words from a word, and they do not exercise caution in transmission. For this reason, one hears that things are attributed to him or to others that are not correct at all, because when people engage in discussion and gossip, they have desires, may Allah protect us, and they say what they do not know. Then he mentioned the third verse, which is the saying of Allah the Exalted: The author (may Allah have mercy on him) did not quote anything but this third verse; if only he had quoted all the verses, it would have been better. Allah the Exalted informs that He created man, and this is a matter known by necessity and by fitrah (the innate natural disposition). Allah alone is the Creator, and the Creator knows what He has created, as He said: So He, Glorious and Exalted is He, knows our conditions, our intentions, our future, and everything that concerns us. For this reason, He said: The thing that your soul whispers, Allah knows it before you speak. But will you be held accountable for it? There is a detail in this: if you incline to it and establish it in your heart as a belief, then Allah will hold you accountable for it; otherwise, there is nothing on you. This is based on the saying of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him): For example, if a person starts to think and wonder whether he should divorce his wife or not, and he imagines this, because it is common among people, she is not divorced even if he intends to divorce her, unless there is a statement, or writing indicating a statement, or a gesture indicating a statement. This is because Allah has overlooked for this Ummah (the Muslim community) what their souls whisper, as long as they do not act or speak. He said: Allah the Exalted has assigned two angels to man who accompany him constantly, one on the right and the other on the left. They accompany him on the right and on the left permanently and record for him everything he utters and everything he does. For this reason, He said: “Observer” means a watcher, and “ready” means present, one who does not let it escape. If you were to put a recorder in your pocket now to record what you say, you would find amazing things coming from you sometimes without you thinking about them. A man may speak a word of the anger of Allah without giving it a thought, and he plunges into the Fire, such and such, nonsense, may Allah protect us. So, “observer” means the watcher who watches you, and “ready” means the present one who is not absent from you; whatever word it is, it is written. It is reported about Imam Ahmad (may Allah have mercy on him) that one of his companions entered upon him while he was sick, groaning from the illness, and he said to him: “So-and-so from the Tabi'un (the generation after the Companions) says that the angel writes even the groaning of the sick person” So he (may Allah have mercy on him) stopped groaning for fear that it would be written against him. For this reason, a person should reduce his speech as much as he can, because the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: So let him say good, meaning speech that contains good, either because it is good in itself or because it is good for what it leads to in terms of affection and love among the companions. Because if you attend a gathering, for example, and do not speak in it, people do not like sitting with you. But if you speak permissible speech in order to reconcile them and be friendly, this is good and falls under the saying of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him): And the important thing is that among the words that are written is backbiting, so beware that it be written against you. Because if you backbite someone, on the Day of Resurrection he will take from your good deeds, which are the most precious thing you have at that time. If anything remains of your good deeds, otherwise he will take from the bad deeds of those you backbit and place them on you, and then you will be thrown into the Fire. We ask Allah to protect us and you from what angers Him, and to guide us and you to what pleases Him.