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12
يا أَيُّهَا الَّذينَ آمَنُوا اجتَنِبوا كَثيرًا مِنَ الظَّنِّ إِنَّ بَعضَ الظَّنِّ إِثمٌ ۖ وَلا تَجَسَّسوا وَلا يَغتَب بَعضُكُم بَعضًا ۚ أَيُحِبُّ أَحَدُكُم أَن يَأكُلَ لَحمَ أَخيهِ مَيتًا فَكَرِهتُموهُ ۚ وَاتَّقُوا اللَّهَ ۚ إِنَّ اللَّهَ تَوّابٌ رَحيمٌ

Ali Unal

O you who believe! Avoid much suspicion, for some suspicion is a grave sin (liable to God’s punishment);1 and do not spy (on one another),2 nor backbite (against one another). Would any of you love to eat the flesh of his dead brother?3 You would abhor it! Keep from disobedience to God in reverence for Him and piety. Surely God is One Who truly returns repentance with liberal forgiveness and additional reward, All-Compassionate (particularly towards His believing servants).
  • The sūrah, which has begun and continues with mention of the things injurious to the social relationships in a Muslim community, now mentions the most common ones among them, such as derision, defamation, calling others by offensive nicknames, and the ill-opinion or evil suspicion of Muslims. So the suspicion that the verse condemns as a grave sin and prohibits is the evil suspicion of Muslims. If we avoid suspicion as much as possible, we can preserve ourselves from that suspicion which is sinful. Ill-opinion or evil suspicion of a Muslim brother and sister means one’s evil suspicion of oneself. Muslims are mirrors to one another, so whoever has an evil suspicion of a Muslim is merely reflecting his or her own inner state. Verse 24: 12 states that a Muslim’s opinion of other Muslims is, in fact, their opinion of themselves.
    Islam absolutely orders that we cherish the good opinion of God and His Messenger, upon him be peace and blessings,. God declares: “Toward My servant I am how My servant thinks of Me” (al-Bukhārī, “Tawhīd”, 15; Muslim, “Tawbah,” 1).
  • The Qur’ān decisively prohibits spying into, or disclosing, the secrets and private lives of people, and orders keeping secret any defect or sinful act which one has seen in a Muslim. Neither can a Muslim government spy on people to see whether they are committing a sin or crime, unless a decisive proof has been established that they are committing something against the public peace and others. Likewise, spying into houses, opening and reading letters that belong to others, and listening to the conversations of other people are all wrong.
  • Said Nursi writes on how this statement condemns backbiting and reprimands backbiters, as follows:
    This statement reprimands the backbiter with six degrees of reprimand and restrains him or her from this sin with six degrees of severity:
    • The hamzah, marking the interrogative (and here translated as would) at the beginning of the sentence reaches into all the words of the verse, so that each of them carries an interrogative accent.
    • Thus, at the very beginning the hamzah in itself asks, “Do you have no intelligence with which you ask and answer, so that you fail to perceive how abominable this thing is?”
    • The second word, love, asks through hamzah, “Is it that your heart, with which you love or hate, is so spoiled that you love a most repugnant thing like backbiting?”
    • Third, the phrase, any of you, asks, “What has happened to your sense of the nature and responsibility of society and civilization that you dare to accept something so poisonous to social life?”
    • Fourth, the phrase, to eat the flesh, asks, “What has happened to your sense of humanity that you are tearing your friend to pieces with your teeth like a wild animal?”
    • Fifth, the phrase, of his brother, asks, “Do you have no human tenderness, no sense of kinship, that you sink your teeth into some innocent person to whom you are tied by numerous links of brotherhood? Do you have no intelligence that you bite into your own limbs with your teeth, in such a senseless fashion?”
    • Sixth, the word, dead, asks, “Where is your conscience? Is your nature so corrupt that you commit such a disgusting act as eating the flesh of your dead brother who deserves much respect?”
    According, then, to the total meaning of the verse and the indications of each of these words, slander and backbiting are repugnant to the intelligence, and to the heart, to humanity and conscience, to human nature, the Religion, and social brotherhood/sisterhood. You see, then, that the verse condemns backbiting in six degrees in a very concise and exact manner and restrains people from it in six miraculous ways.
    Backbiting is a shameful weapon and most commonly used by people of enmity, envy, and obstinacy; no self-respecting, honorable human being would ever demean themselves by resorting to such a vile weapon.
    Backbiting consists in speaking about an absent person in a way that would repel or annoy him or her if he or she were present and were to hear. If the words uttered are true, that is backbiting; if they are not, this is both backbiting and slander and, therefore, is a doubly loathsome sin.
    Backbiting can be permissible in a very few, particular circumstances:
    • A person who has been wronged can present a formal complaint to some officer, so that with their help, a wrong may be righted and justice restored.
    • If a person contemplating co-operation or marriage with another comes to hold counsel with you, and you say to them, disinterestedly and purely for the sake of their benefit, and in order to counsel them properly, without any further motive, “Do not do that business with that person; it will be to your disadvantage.”
    • If a person says only by way of factual description, not to expose to disgrace or notoriety, “That crippled one went to such and such a place.”
    • If the person being criticized is an open and unashamed sinner; that is, far from being ashamed of it, they take pride in the sins they commit— if they take pleasure in their wrongdoing and commit sins openly.
    In these particular cases, backbiting may be permissible, provided it is done disinterestedly and purely for the sake of truth and in the collective interest. Otherwise, backbiting is like a fire that consumes good deeds in the manner of a flame eating up wood.
    If one has engaged in backbiting or listened to it willingly, one should seek God’s forgiveness, saying, “O God, forgive me and the one whom I backbit”, and when he meets the person about whom they spoke ill, they should say to them: “Forgive me!” (The Letters, “The 22nd Letter,” 2: 76–78).