In the name of God, the All-Merciful, the Most Merciful.
Chapter One Hundred and Fifteen: On Knowledge of Backbiting, Its Praiseworthy and Blameworthy Forms
When the Real descends from His might
to the dwelling of hunger and mercy,
take Him according to what He has said,
for through it nobility is attained.
Do not cast it before an ignorant person,
lest you arrive at a place of regret.
Your backbiting of the Real is mentioning Him
through what He has not said: this is ill fortune.
Even if it is true, nevertheless,
when someone says it, He says, “Desist!”
Know—may God give you understanding of what He makes you hear—that backbiting is mentioning an absent person in a way that would displease him if he heard it. It is forbidden to believers. The Real is not backbitten, for He is the Hearing, the Seeing, in the reality of the matter and according to those who know Him. He has made clear to His servants what He dislikes from them and what He praises: “Among them are those who believe and those who disbelieve” [al-Baqara 2:253]. He therefore does not backbite either: both the active and passive senses.
(The Exceptional Situations and the Preference for Indirect Speech)
Backbiting is forbidden among those charged with responsibility. People of honorable conduct among nonbelievers avoid it out of refinement and nobility of soul, for avoiding it indicates noble origins, except in particular situations where it is obligatory and a means of nearness to God. Scrupulous believers speak indirectly in these cases rather than explicitly,
Notes
Translator’s note TN4097-1: The prose defines backbiting through absence and then denies both the active and passive senses of the Real, who hears and sees. The poem warns against attributing to Him expressions He has not Himself used, even where the underlying matter may be true.
