1252 – Ibn Masʿūd (may Allah be pleased with him) reported that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: “When you are three, let not two of you confer privately to the exclusion of the third until you mingle with other people, for that would grieve him.” Agreed upon, and the wording is Muslim’s (1).

Glossary of terms
• fa-lā: the particle fa (“so/then”) links the apodosis to the conditional particle idhā (“when”), while lā is a prohibitive particle that makes the verb jussive and demands that the action be left.
• yatanāj (“to confer secretly”): written without the final yāʾ, leaving the verb in the jussive mood, as occurs in some copies of al-Bukhārī. Most manuscripts, however, read it with an alif maqṣūrah (yatanājā), putting it in the indicative, as explained in Fatḥ al-Bārī.
• takhtaliṭū (“you mingle”): from the root khalata, yakhluṭu (pattern faʿala, yafʿulu); here it means “to mix or come together with people.”
• min: with a kasrah on the mīm and sukūn on the nūn. Among its many functions is causation, which is what is intended here (“because”).
• ḥattā: a particle that can serve various purposes; in this context it denotes the limit, meaning “until.”

Points derived from the ḥadith

1. Islam commands us to heal hearts, foster pleasant company and conversation, and forbids anything that harms, saddens, or arouses suspicion in a fellow Muslim. Thus, if three people are together and two of them speak privately, excluding the third, that offends and distresses him and makes him feel unworthy of joining their discussion, just as it makes him