Backbiting is without a doubt a major issue in our religion. It has been said that backbiting is equivalent to eating the flesh of your dead brother. There comes a time where you may find yourself in the situation where the person you are with is backbiting about someone to you. How must you handle this situation?
Shaykh Yahya Ibrahim answers.
What should I do? And how do I react to someone talking negatively about me talking backbiting about other people's to me?
I think that's, you know, a very serious question that at one point or another, all of us have felt it, three things that you need to do one, don't answer back and don't, don't engage in it, because you don't want to add fuel to the fire. Number two, keep in mind that the one who talks to you about others is going to talk to others about you. Number three, recognize that this is a sin. And it's something that you need to assist them to stop, it doesn't necessarily have to be stopped brother, or stop sister, you know, a red card or something you you've gone overboard, but it could be that you just deflect the conversation to something else. And you just, you know, you know, you flow like
water out of it, and you just help them to overcome it, you don't make a comment about and you say, oh, did you know, oh my gosh, I just remembered, you know, Subhan, Allah, this has just come up. And that way you've assisted them. And maybe it's not directly an insult. But if you find that this has become a regular habit and trait with that person that they just want to talk to you about someone else, it might be something where you do need to pull them up, and you need to speak to them very directly and say, you know, it actually makes me feel a little bit uncomfortable when you speak about this other person. You know, I know them really well. And I know some of the things that you
might say are true. And this is what the Prophet told us. You're not I know you're not lying about them. But if you really had such a big problem with them, maybe you should say to them, or in front of them. The second, you know, second thing additional to that is to remember that some people you just can't cure and some people will never get better. And you might want to consider what kind of protections you'll make for yourself so that you are not the next object subject to being spoken about in some other setting, or whether that friendship is actually a friendship