Zia Sheikh – Ghiba Backbiting Ramadan Khatira
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AI: Transcript ©
Yesterday I talked a little bit about gheeba
and controlling the tongue and on the way
out some people requested me to go into
a little bit more detail on the issue
because for example there are certain instances where
gheeba and talking behind somebody's back may become
permissible.
So that and the rulings if you've done
gheeba of somebody what should you do to
seek forgiveness from him?
These are things that we should all know
about.
So we heard yesterday the ayat of the
Quran in which Allah SWT He says that
doing gheeba is like consuming the flesh of
your dead brother.
Going on to the hadith of the Prophet
SAW He was on the night of Laylatul
Qadr, he was passing by the people of
Jahannam and he saw people that they had
nails made out of brass.
They had nails made out of brass and
they were basically scratching their own faces with
those nails, their faces and their chest.
The Prophet SAW he says that I addressed
Jibreel AS and I asked him Who are
these people?
Oh Jibreel.
Jibreel replied and said these are the people
that used to eat the meat of the
people meaning they used to backbite about the
people and they used to fall into their
honour meaning they used to delve into their
honour.
Honour meaning their dignity, their respect, talk about
them behind their back with the intention of
dishonouring them or blemishing their honour.
So this is the punishment that the Prophet
SAW saw on the night of Mi'raj
for those people that were engaging in gheeba.
Why do people engage in gheeba?
What is the reason?
There are many reasons that can happen.
One is jealousy.
A person is simply jealous of somebody, jealous
of his success, jealous of his position, jealous
of what he has.
So jealousy leads him to bad mouth him
in front of other people.
The other thing is just simply he doesn't
like him.
He doesn't like the person that he is
doing gheeba of so therefore he does it.
He wants to just ridicule him and also
he may not have anything against that particular
person but just because he is in bad
company and that bad company wants to engage
in gheeba and joke about other people therefore
going along with the flow of the people
he involves himself in the gheeba also.
So many reasons occur through which a person
becomes a victim or the criminal in this
case of engaging in gheeba and backbiting about
people.
There are ways to fix the gheeba.
There are two ways.
One is a mujmal way which is basically
a simple way and one is a mufassal
way which is more detailed.
The simple way is that a person should
be reminded or he should remind himself of
the gravity of the sin that he is
committing and also he should remind himself that
it is equivalent to eating the flesh of
dead people and also he needs to remind
himself that he is turning over his hasanat
to the person that he is doing gheeba
of.
You dislike a person, okay keep that dislike
to yourself because if you are doing his
gheeba you are basically benefiting him.
You are benefiting him by turning over your
own good deeds to him so if you
dislike him so much keep your opinion to
yourself.
He won't get your good deeds.
Okay so he needs to remind himself that
this is going to happen that my hasanat
are going to him on the day of
judgment.
So these are the things, the simple things
that a person needs to remind himself.
If you want to go into detail a
person needs to also look at the reasoning
that is making him do the gheeba itself
and he needs to get rid of that
reason.
For example if it is a dislike of
a person or if it's jealousy, jealousy is
an evil that is inside of me.
If I'm engaging in gheeba because of jealousy
that is not because of any bad in
that person that is an evil inside of
me that I need to remove.
I've mentioned before in my lectures that evil
things that occur in a person's heart they
are known collectively in the Arabic language as
ghil.
What is ghil?
Ghil is an all-inclusive name that includes
all of the impurities of the heart and
Allah SWT says about the people of Jannah
that before people actually enter paradise that ghil
needs to be removed from the person's heart.
It needs to be removed from a person's
chest.
Why?
Because it is an impure thing and impure
things do not enter paradise.
So there are different opinions as to how
that happens.
One of them is that before the people
will enter paradise they will cross the special
stream and they will be bathed in that
stream and because of that stream those impurities
they will be removed.
Otherwise if a person has these qualities inside
of him that person cannot enter paradise.
That's why the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam mentioned
A person cannot enter paradise who has an
atom's weight of kibr or arrogance in his
heart.
A person who is a qati' meaning he
breaks relationships with people he will not enter
paradise and if we delve into all of
these hadith that the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam
mentioned these are all related to issues where
a person is disliking somebody, has hatred for
somebody, has impurity in his heart for somebody
and because of that he himself will not
enter paradise.
So that has to be removed from our
system and that is very very important.
There are certain instances where it is permissible
to engage in a controlled form of ghibah.
What is that?
First of all a person has been oppressed.
A person has been oppressed and to get
rid of that oppression he goes to a
person in charge, he goes to the authority,
he goes to the police for example, his
money has been stolen from him or somebody
burgled his house, he knows who it was,
maybe it was a Muslim.
So in this case to go to the
police and to report that person there is
nothing wrong with it.
He has been the victim of oppression so
therefore to remove that oppression and to report
that oppression to the authorities there is absolutely
nothing wrong with it.
The second reason that is permissible to engage
in a ghibah is to try to get
rid of munkar and evil in a person's
life.
So you know that a person he is
engaging in a certain type of sin and
you know that his close friend has an
influence on him.
Now you can go to that close friend
and in privacy tell him that look, this
is your close friend, he listens to you,
why don't you talk to him because he
is engaging in things which are really inappropriate.
So talking to him with a very sincere
intention, sincerity in this case, ikhlas, with the
intention of really rectifying that person, in this
case it is permissible to engage in a
certain level of ghibah.
The third reason that it could be permissible
to engage in ghibah is istiftah.
Istiftah means to seek a fatwa.
Again a person he has been wronged by
somebody or he feels that he has been
wronged by somebody or sometimes there are disputes
that take place between husband and wife.
So they go to the imam or a
person in charge or a counselor and they
have to explain their situation to the counselor
and then that person will advise them accordingly.
So in this case to hide the situation
that is going on, it would not be
appropriate.
So to engage in ghibah, for example the
wife complains about her husband in front of
somebody, obviously you try to fix the situation
in the house, within the confines of the
household first and if it doesn't get fixed
then you go to somebody professional who can
help you.
So in this case to talk about what's
going on and the reasonings that she or
he came to take advice, it is permissible
in that situation to engage in a certain
level of ghibah.
The fourth situation would be to warn the
other Muslims about the evil of a person.
So for example you run into a person
who is a con man.
He goes around, promises people that he is
going to take their money for investment and
then he takes that investment money and runs
off with it.
And that person who invested the money never
gets that money back.
So the person who is being conned in
this case, he can go to other people
and community members and tell them that hey
this is what happened to me, you need
to be careful so that other people do
not become the victims of his trickery.
So it is permissible to warn people so
that they do not become victims of that
person's trickery or the person knows that this
person he sells cars and the cars that
he sells, they are maybe taken from junkyards
and put together in a way to make
them look brand new but they are very
dangerous.
They would not pass an inspection and if
a person gets involved in an accident, it
would be very dangerous for him to be
in that particular car because the shell of
the car has been destroyed in a previous
accident.
So the person knows that he is doing
that.
So to warn people about this, it would
be permissible to engage in a certain level
of ghibah.
A person sometimes, he does sins openly.
A person is committing sins openly and it's
not hidden from other people.
Like a person he is engaging in alcohol,
he is drinking openly in the street or
he commits sins and then he discloses the
sins to other people and this is also
in itself a sin.
The Prophet ﷺ condemned those people that commit
sins and Allah covered those sins for that
person and then instead of keeping the sins
covered, the person goes around and openly, he
tells the people that I did such and
such a thing last night and we had
great fun last night because I did X,
Y and Z last night.
So this sins that are covered by Allah
a person openly exposes them.
So in the case that the person is
doing that, so there is nothing hidden anymore.
So to warn other people about this person
who is openly committing sins, it would not
be regarded as ghibah.
The sixth situation is that a person, he
is known by a particular name.
He is known by a particular name.
For example there is a Sahabi who is
named Aqra ibn Habis.
The real name of Aqra, the real meaning
of Aqra, it means bald.
But he became famous by that name.
He became known by that name.
So to call the person by the name
that he is already famous with, not in
a demeaning way but rather to let people
know that you are talking about him and
not in a derogatory way, you are using
his name with a name that he is
famous with.
It is permissible to do that but if
you can choose another name then it is
better for you to do that.
So now the situation is this, that you
have a situation where you have engaged in
ghibah of somebody.
How do you fix that?
How do you actually fix that?
The question is that if you were to
tell the person that I talked about you
behind your back and your relationship with him
was perfectly fine and now you are telling
him that is going to result in problems
between yourselves.
So what do you do?
The purpose of Sharia is not to cause
rifts and break-ups and breaking up of
relationships between people.
So if you feel that that may happen
then what you should do is in the
same majalis, in the same gatherings in which
you were talking bad about him, you start
speaking good about him.
You start speaking good about that person and
that will equal out what you said bad
about him and then the people that you
said bad about him in front of they
will realize that that person is good and
the bad that you said about him would
be inshallah nullified.
And also you should make dua for that
person in the case of you having wronged
him, make dua for him and ask Allah
SWT for forgiveness.
But if you feel that you telling him
is going to help and he is not
going to mind then it is better for
you to tell him and seek forgiveness from
him.
And another way could be that you actually
come up to him in any given situation
and say to him please brother if I
have wronged you in any way please forgive
me.
So this is a general statement that you
ask him and maybe that person might get
a hint and he may forgive you for
doing that.
So this is another way that you can
do it without hurting the person's feeling.
And one thing that I forgot to mention
is sometimes somebody comes to you for reference,
character reference and particularly when it comes to
marriage.
Somebody comes to you and asks you a
question that somebody has come for a proposal
and I know this brother he hangs around
with you sometimes, he comes to the masjid
sometimes and I have seen you with him,
what do you know about him?
So the person really has to be brutally
honest in that situation.
If he knows any flaws in the character
of the person he needs to make those
flaws known.
There is a hadith of the Prophet Sallallahu
Alaihi Wasallam in which a sahabia came to
the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam and said two
people have asked me for my hand in
marriage and the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam immediately
said that one of them he is sa
'aluk.
One of them is sa'aluk.
Sa'aluk means he hasn't got a penny
to his name.
He doesn't have anything.
So if you marry him you are going
to probably get yourself into financial trouble.
The other he doesn't remove his stick from
his shoulder and this can have two meanings.
One of them that he is very strict.
Basically if you do anything wrong the stick
is going to come off and he is
going to use it on you.
The other meaning is it is an indication
that he travels a lot.
He puts a stick on his shoulder and
he walks around and travels a lot.
So the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam for both
of them immediately told the lady, told the
sahabia that both of them have these flaws
and then he recommended a third person and
then she says that I didn't like this
third person but because the Prophet Sallallahu Alaihi
Wasallam advised me to marry him I did
so and then I became a woman who
was envied because of my household and the
fact that my marriage was so blissful.
So in the instance of somebody asking you
for a character reference it is permissible also
to tell the truth and it doesn't necessarily
have to do with marriage.
It can also be for a job.
A person puts you down as a reference,
as a job reference.
He worked with you in the past.
You know you must tell this new employer
the qualities that he had, the good qualities
and the shortfall that he had in the
qualities so that the new employer is aware
of what he is getting himself into and
whether he wants to hire the person or
not and that's why you have these character
references.
It's not because he's put your name down,
he's your friend and somebody calls you, oh
yeah he's a great guy, he's a good
worker, he's hardworking and I know him and
yet you're telling a complete lie.
So in this situation also to tell the
truth it is an amanah upon you and
you must tell the truth.
You must not twist the truth.
You must say exactly what it is.
So in the case of marriage, somebody comes
to you for a character reference, in the
case of jobs, character reference, it is important
for you to tell the truth and this
inshallah will not be regarded as ghibah.
So I hope that inshallah this clears a
few things up about the issue of backbiting
and I pray that Allah swt protects us
from this evil and He makes us a
cohesive and a loving and a united community.