The noun “ghibah” comes from the root “gayb,” which means “to become absent, to disappear from sight, to remain hidden.” In Arabic usage it could originally signify mentioning someone with either good or bad words, but as a technical term it has come to be used almost exclusively for “speaking of someone with bad words.”¹⁾

“Would any one of you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother? You would loathe it at once! So beware of God’s punishment and protect yourselves from this vile deed. God is Ever-Relenting, Ever-Merciful.” (Al-Hujurat 49:12).

“Woe to every backbiter who, with lips and eyes askew, scorns others!” (Al-Humaza 104:1).

“Beware of backbiting! For backbiting is more severe than adultery. A person may commit adultery, then repent, and God accepts his repentance; but a backbiter is not forgiven unless the person he backbites pardons him.”²⁾

“Anything you say about your brother that might distress him if he heard it—whether you say it to his face or behind his back—is backbiting.”³⁾

“Some of us avoid even doubtful foods as meticulously as if splitting a hair; that is a fine act for one’s spiritual life and must not be belittled. Yet the same person may quite easily backbite, lie, and envy others—though eating something merely doubtful is one thing, while gnawing your brother’s flesh, and that when he is dead, is another. This does not mean we should ignore doubtful things; it means we should be even more careful with what God has clearly forbidden. Backbiting destroys a person’s good deeds and rots society from within. The same applies to other prohibitions. Sadly, among ordinary people the harams have become cheap. Our standard, however, must be the Book and the Sunnah, not our whims.”⁴⁾

“Saying about someone, ‘He just stood there staring at me blankly,’ is backbiting if it would displease him to hear it—and backbiting is haram just like lying, adultery, theft, or abandoning prayer. Strangely, some people say they are ‘serving the religion and the nation,’ they sit with fellow workers hoping to gain reward, yet they do not refrain from such an ugly sin. In truth this attitude means accepting one part of the religion and discarding another. The Qur’an speaks of those whose faith has not settled in their hearts, saying: ‘They believe in one part and disbelieve in another,’ criticizing them for practicing some commandments while ignoring others.”⁵⁾

“If correcting others is not our explicit duty, we have no right to notice their faults, bring them up, or try to talk them out of what they do. Someone may replace his reed mats with luxury carpets, throw out his wooden bench and buy plush armchairs. For people who live on our level none of this is haram. Spreading a carpet or placing an armchair is not forbidden. Sleeping on a mat and resting one’s head on a plank can be a form of asceticism—but if it does not come from one’s nature and only serves to show off, it can become very dangerous for that person.

No-one may say, ‘Come now, Hodja! The people you speak of are long gone; today everyone sits on carpets and couches.’ Replacing mats and benches with carpets and couches is not haram, but criticizing and backbiting the person who does so is certainly haram. Saying, ‘He sits on carpets now, he has changed his couches; he has gone corrupt,’ is backbiting and absolutely forbidden.”⁶⁾

“When backbiting, slander, false accusation, suspicion, and similar sins are committed not against an individual but against an entire group, they will not be forgiven unless every single member of that group grants pardon. Suppose someone speaks against the Qadirīs or the Shadhilis as a whole; he has committed such an enormous backbiting that—unless he obtains pardon from every person from ʿAbd al-Qadir al-Jilani or Abu’l-Hasan al-Shadhili down to the present—he cannot be forgiven. In other words, if a man speaks about an entire community, he must find every individual, explain what he said, and ask pardon: ‘I said such-and-such about the community you belong to; you have a share in the right that I violated—please forgive me.’ If he cannot do this (God forbid) he cannot escape. Just as a universal supplication is accepted, likewise a universal backbiting requires universal pardon; otherwise one cannot extricate oneself, and the burden of so many people’s rights may—in a sense—equal disbelief.”⁷⁾

“Despite the Qur’an’s heart-shaking warnings, this accursed sin has gained an air of innocence among us and is welcomed in our gatherings. We speak of an absent friend with ease—‘He does not do his share of the work’; ‘he is lazy’; ‘he does not understand this matter’; ‘he has no share in the works of faith’—criticizing him freely. Reading works about faith is a fine merit; but saying, ‘These friends do not read the Risales (The Risale-i Nur Collection) properly,’ in this way is such backbiting, such a disgrace, that it takes away the merit of reading those works fifty times over.”⁸⁾

“Backbiting the representatives of a community is the same as backbiting the whole community. If someone speaks against an ordinary man like me, that is individual backbiting; but certain figures have grown to represent a multitude, as a pole represents all who follow that line. Their honor is interwoven with the honor of the community they represent; mention their name and all those people come to mind. Speaking against such a person backbites the whole community. If someone says of such a figure, ‘He lacks understanding,’ then (God forbid) he has committed a sin graver than adultery.”⁹⁾

“Failing to maintain the line of God’s unity—shirk, the greatest injustice—and acts like openly trampling others’ rights, oppressing them, deceiving them, playing with their honor, or backbiting them, are secondary forms of injustice; while ignoring God’s commands and prohibitions, refusing to stay within the lawful enjoyments, is yet another form. The Qur’an underlines justice and servanthood as much as it warns against all kinds of injustice, calling believers to shun every deviation, oppression, cruelty, and betrayal.”¹⁰⁾

“Backbiting is a shameful weapon commonly used by people of enmity, envy, and obstinacy. No self-respecting, honorable person has anything to do with it”¹¹⁾

“… one Tradition says: ‘Backbiting is like murder.’¹²⁾ This means that there is a sort of backbiting more harmful than deadly poison.”¹³⁾

“As for censure and restraint, consider what follows: ‘Would any of you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother?’ (49: 12). It censures backbiting in six degrees of censure, and restrains the backbiter with six degrees of severity. The initial hamza (in the original Arabic) is interrogative. This sense penetrates all the phrases of the verse. So through the initial hamza it asks: ‘Do you have no reason or intelligence, the faculty of asking and answering, that you do not perceive how abominable this thing is?’ Like asks: ‘Is your heart, with which you love and hate, so corrupted that you love such a repugnant thing?” Any of you asks: ‘What has happened to your sense of social relationship and civilization, which derive their liveliness from collectivity, that you accept something so poisonous to social life?’ To eat the flesh asks: ‘What has happened to your sense of humanity, that you tear your friend to pieces with your teeth like a wild animal?’ Of his brother asks: ‘Do you have no human tenderness, no sense of kinship? How can you sink your teeth into an innocent person tied to you by numerous links of brotherhood? Or do you have no intelligence, and so senselessly bite into your own limbs?’ Dead asks: ‘Where is your conscience? Is your nature so corrupt that you can do the most repulsive thing like eating his flesh to your brother who is now in the position where he must be shown the greatest respect?’ Thus slander and backbiting are repugnant to one’s intelligence, heart, humanity, conscience, human nature, and religious and national brotherhood. See how this verse condemns backbiting in six degrees very concisely, and restrains people from it in six miraculous ways.”¹⁴⁾

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