Tell that man we will die...
Tell that man we will die, our place will be the grave and the promise of Judgment Day has been given to us and Almighty God is the arbitrator between us.”[^1] Restrain yourself from the beginning Another fact is that when a man hears backbiting, then if he is habituated, he is unable to restrain and he also begins backbiting. He finds out a defect in someone and tells it to others. Then both parties fall in a continuing prohibited matter.
As a result, backbiting is easy to indulge in and it becomes so common that its wickedness wanes and even those religious minded people who refrain from adultery devour backbiting like sweetmeats. They become habituated to it and see nothing wrong in it and it becomes a routine thing. It is said: O parents! Do not speak badly in front of your children so that their respect may not vanish. Do not speak a lie in front of a child, do into give a false promise to him.
If you have told your child: I am going to the market to buy sweetmeat for you, then do buy sweetmeats. If you do not bring it, the child feels that breaking a promise is an ordinary and easy thing and he also feels that lying is not so serious an offence. This is why backbiting becomes easy and common for the people. Consequently everyone indulges in backbiting and no one prevents anyone from it. Pious looking backbiting Sometimes one indulges in backbiting as a kind of piety.
By so doing he puts a cap on his own head and on the head of people also. For instance, one comes to you, sits down, then takes somebody’s name and says: How good a person so and so is, praises him for a while and then says: But alas, how much my heart is burning for him as he is not behaving nicely with his wife and children. The first words of sympathy and praise were a show, so that, thereafter, he may sting him and also boast that he did not indulge in backbiting.
Thus he added show-off to backbiting. It is a show of piety. It is, as if to say that I have a religious heart that is why I had to backbite one, to make allegation, to disgrace someone. He calls it religiousness and piety. The late Second Martyr says in Kashfur Reebah : There also is a sin of joining the sin of backbiting with the sin of show-off. After the Second Martyr, whoever wrote a book about backbiting has considered the aforesaid backbiting (joined with show-off) as a most dangerous sin.