'Ghibbat': Part V

Surah Al-Hujurat: On 'Ghibbat'

Alhamdulillah, I continue on the same subject of my Friday Sermon on “Ghibbat” (backbiting) and the subjects connected with it, especially Muhabbat (love) for Allah, for the Holy Prophet (pbuh) and for the works of Deen-i-Islam (Way of Islam). And this is the 5^th Friday [5^th part on Surah Al-Hujurat - Ghibbat] , and I am going into details to make you all understand profoundly this subject.

Like I told you last Friday, Hazrat Muhammad (pbuh) had a direct connexion with Allah and this love came directly from Allah (swt). He did not have to struggle (wage Jihad) for it. But for common people, it becomes necessary that they struggle – make efforts – to acquire divine love as it is not an easy task to obtain Allah’s direct love as well as the love of the prophet (pbuh). And it is not also simple to establish, in connexion with this love, relations of love with people in general.

There should be efforts made to attain this goal and for this you you need to focus on [your] Muhabbat (love) and all defects therein and you need to make the necessary efforts to get rid of those weaknesses. To be able to do this, you need to have the feel and interest for it, and without this feel and interest, then there can be no love for Allah, and for the Messenger of Allah. If the feel itself is low, weak, then your love for the person whom you love also shall be little. This is a natural occurrence and many times, by neglecting this aspect/ subject, you stop looking for solutions for your internal, intrinsic problems. You think that despite making so much efforts to acquire the love of Allah, despite praying so hard (making duahs), you aren’t getting any taste/ feel and pleasure in your Salaat/ Namaz (i.e. the obligatory prayers) and in the performance of good deeds. You think that you are doing duahs, and yet your duahs are not being accepted.

A possible reason for this is that the feel itself [your feel for prayer etc.] has been ruined, and that is why all the time your mind wander and is attached to mundane pleasures which you deem correct. You feel attracted to all this; your love for mundane things has surpassed the love which you needed to have for Allah and thus this has not created the feel in you for attaining Allah’s love or to do good deeds.

When the feel is not right, then the love also shall not be right. It would only remain in the realm of imagination. It would remain only a claim only [words which are not translated into actions]. When your love for Allah does not come out from the profoundness of the heart, then your duahs also will not come out from the profoundness of your heart, and your Salaat also shall not have any feel, and you will hurry to finish your prayers in few seconds or minutes as if they were a burden for you.

So, to be able to succeed in acquiring that feeling in your prayers (Namaz) – deep love for prayers, to acquire that connexion with Allah – and to have your supplications (duahs) accepted, you need to bring about a great spiritual reform in you.

You should first of all have deep love for Allah Who shall then help you to go through all kinds of hard trials which He made you go through as a means to test you in your love for Him, but despite all this [i.e. all these trials] you should not be discouraged. You should on the contrary increase your love, have more love and not despair. You should not let the trials which you are undergoing rip you away from Allah, and these should not at all make you leave your Namaz, Duah, Zikr, Tilawat Quran, and the other good deeds and acts of worship to acquire Allah’s overall deep love. There are a lot of efforts and sacrifices to make so that you may be able to acquire that divine love, so that Allah may be pleased with you and love you. It is only then that you will find that your duahs, Namaz and good deeds are accepted by Allah.

Similarly, like I told you before, “Ghibbat” (backbiting) is not a simple subject, unlike what many people think. As long as your feel and interest for Allah, for your prayers and as long as you don’t acquire the look [of love] with which Allah looks at His servants [i.e. those who love and are devoted to Him], then as long as you don’t have all this, then you shall not know what a disgusted thing you are doing, eating the flesh of your brothers when you indulge in “Ghibbat” (backbiting) and thus Allah shall distance Himself from you and condemn you for this. And when you indulge in backbiting and if you don’t develop a distaste for that, this is an indication that your feel has been completely ruined.

This is therefore a very clear sign which Allah has put before us. With this measure we are able to gauge with certainty the state of our heart. So, whenever we are not being able to reform ourselves, and in the light of the results that we are getting, we should thus be concerned by all these measures and results before us. There is no lie in these measures [i.e. to shed away the garb of backbiting and to acquire Allah’s love – for your own reform].

Thus you should first develop [and maintain or increase] that feel and interest and you shall then receive love for Allah and for the Holy Prophet (pbuh) as well as love for the Elect of Allah who comes from Allah to guide you all on the Straight Path. So, level up your feel [for Allah and for all good things connected with the Deen of Allah] for it is then that you shall have love for good deeds and you shall develop distaste and hatred for sins.

If you don’t level up your [i.e. this] feel, then you shall not be able to go forward with this project [to have love for Allah and to attain Allah]. In connection with “Ghibbat” (backbiting), the next step which I expect from you is that you should examine your heart, and see how much pleasure are your deriving from “Ghibbat” (backbiting). If you can’t eliminate it all at once, you need to see to it that the feel for backbiting diminishes. You should gauge whether it is decreasing or not! If you succeed in decreasing that feel and interest for backbiting, then, Alhamdulillah you shall be saved; you shall be in good [spiritual] health.

But if after having listened to these firm advices, and despite deciding to stop indulging in backbiting, yet you continue to do it and you take pleasure in doing it, then this means that you are not undergoing any form of reform. This means that you made efforts to cut connexion [with “Ghibbat” and all evils] forcefully and thus when you keep inclining towards evil, then despite forcing yourselves to do good deeds, but then at one point these thrusts [of evils] reopens and you start again to indulge in evils [i.e. backbiting].

Thus give importance to the means to extracting backbiting completely from your lives and examine yourselves deeply like I have showed you. And you must have this certainty that as a Jamaat, if we are free completely from “Ghibbat” (backbiting), then our community (Jamaat) also shall be saved. Our social relations also shall be saved. From among all the weaknesses/ defects which there are in us, if we cannot rid ourselves completely from all evils at once, but we should strive to diminish them greatly, and therefore, all the despicable results which we witness everyday in the realm of marriage, then this striving shall have an extraordinary positive effect in this field also.

You can gauge the situation in homes – I cannot personally go in all houses but from what I have seen and witnessed, especially during my Dawa, and from what Allah has also shown me, I have come to know how some kinds of people are talking [and behaving] in their homes. In some cases there are daughters and their mother who sit together to backbite their sister-in-law (their brother’s wife). And on top of that, the brother does not have any sense of honour and does not know how to accomplish his husbandly duties towards his wife; he participates actively along with his mother and sisters in talking against his wife. The mother and daughters collaborate to demean the daughter-in-law/ sister-in-law, calling her stupid and seek to create unrest, misunderstandings and problems between husband and wife.

All this is pure cruelty, disorder and injustice and it is also backbiting and there are other dangerous forms of injustices attached to it. If the poor daughter-in-law has come to make an error, and if you get to have true sympathy for her – such sympathies which you develop due to your connexion with Hazrat Muhammad (pbuh) – then, you should become like a mirror for her. You should make her understand with lots of love, and you would even feel the pain she feels, you would feel her difficulties and instead of igniting the fire of hatred, backbiting, and fighting – where the house would become a warzone, hell, where there is palavers, disputes, physical attacks etc. – you would strive to transform that home into a haven of peace, such a place where there is respect for each other’s rights and the house would be such a place where it is good to live, in peace and tranquillity, everyone being in good terms with one another, and where there is no fight or dispute. Through your noble act, you would have encouraged husband and wife to live in harmony with peace, and tranquillity and the blessings of Allah would have surrounded that couple [and home].

Sometimes you see daughters-in-law who are against their mothers-in-law and sisters-in-law. They say all kinds of bad things against their mothers-in-law and sisters-in-law to their husbands. They know that the husbands are not there [to witness anything] for they have to go to work, and thus at night, they report all kinds of talks to them about their mothers and sisters. And they want that their husbands separate from their families and seek separate accommodation. Such wife is at rest when she sees that her husband has broken all relations with his mother and sisters… as long as he keeps his relation intact with her own family – her mother and family! Thus, seeking to create misunderstandings and chaos for someone, and peace cannot go together.

So, if you see what is happening in family or conjugal lives, if the start of the journey itself is based on hatred and other detestable and humiliating things, then [if you are guilty] you have committed a great sin which is detestable before the sight of Allah. If you really mean it when you say that you have love for Hazrat Muhammad (pbuh), then this affirmation/ proclamation should resonate in your ears that a Muslim is a mirror for another Muslim. In the past also I told you that a mirror does not make any sound. If a person is wrongly dressed, his hair is not well combed etc., whenever he looks at himself in the mirror, then the mirror will show him very silently his defects. So, there are lots of wisdom in this example [and Hadith]. A Muslim must correct himself and bring about the reform of a person quietly like a mirror, and he must encourage the person to realise his error and to correct himself properly.

Due to lack of time, I need to stop here for today. It is indeed a very important and vast subject in all its aspects. There are many aspects to this subject and thus it needs to be continued [later on]. May Allah (swt) give me the Tawfiq to continue to explain on the same subject [next week] for the Tarbiyyat (education) of all Muslims throughout the world and of all humanity in general. I pray that through these sermons on this subject, many familial and marital problems in society etc., be resolved, and that peace be established in the world and in each home. Insha-Allah, Ameen.

---Friday Sermon of 11 October 2019~12 Safar 1441 AH delivered by Hadhrat Khalifatullah Munir Ahmad Azim Saheb (atba) of Mauritius.