It is like eating corpses of one another!

It is like eating corpses of one another! There is a subtle aspect in this comparison to which I had hinted a few days back. It has a logical proof. It exposes the impermissibility of backbiting. The logic is this. God has made this mankind in such a way that everyone benefits everyone so that the system of the world may work nicely. In other words, every person (whoever he or she may be) has his or her own influence or effect.

It must become manifest and he or she should also get benefit of the influence of others. I will give an example. One knows how to bake bread nicely. He should continue working and bake bread for the benefit of people with the influence of his existence. He must also buy oil and rice etc. from the one who sells provision. He should also take the services of a tailor for his clothing needs. Thus one must benefit from others and benefit others.

This world’s face is like the eye and the skin and the eyebrow. Everything is good in its place. (Persian couplet) Here, everyone should benefit from one another. This is possible when they are together and in unison. It should also be the same with the class of spiritual leadership. The scholar should also benefit others and get benefit from others. He must correct the religion of the people and it can be so only when they are joined with one another.

If they have relations with the people they get benefit from them. If there is no unison, benefit will not be available. Backbiting is the cause of creating disunity between the organs of human society. It is like killing one and throwing him away from society. They have thus made him useless. The one who backbites anyone from a pulpit or from any place wants to prevent people from taking any benefit from him. This is why God had prohibited backbiting and so also He has prohibited spying.

Such spying and peeping into the affairs of others becomes a prelude to disunity. Disunity causes non-availability of one another’s benefit. If this ruthless fellow had not backbitten about him, people would have continued to go to him and take benefit of his knowledge.

But the backbiter killed him and disconnected him from society, cut off his relation with the Islamic society and religious brotherhood and thus he (the backbiter) became the cause of depriving both the society and the individual from the benefit of each another. Pious Shaykh, yet known as unclean About fifty or sixty years ago, there was a man with knowledge living in Shiraz.