Islam is also used to denote safety, meaning that people are kept safe from a person’s harm. Thus one may say, “aslama,” that is, he has entered into silm (peaceful conduct toward others) so that he does not harm them. From this sense comes the ḥadith: “A Muslim is the one from whose tongue and hand the Muslims are safe.”

The Muslims are therefore safe from his tongue: he neither insults nor curses them, neither backbites nor carries tales among them, nor does he incite any kind of evil or corruption. He has restrained his tongue—and restraining the tongue is one of the most difficult challenges a human being faces, for a person may find it all too easy to let his tongue run loose.

For this reason the Prophet ﷺ said to Muʿādh ibn Jabal, “Shall I not tell you what holds all of that together?” I replied, “Yes, O Messenger of Allah.” He took hold of his own tongue and said, “Restrain this.” I said, “O Messenger of Allah, will we really be taken to task for what we say?” He answered, “May your mother be bereaved of you, Muʿādh! Are people hurled into the Fire on their faces—or he said: on their nostrils—except for the harvest of their tongues?”

The tongue, then, is the most perilous of a person’s limbs. Accordingly, when one rises in the morning, the limbs—the hands, the feet, the eyes, indeed all of them—plead with the tongue; the private parts do the same, for they are driven by sexual desire, and the tongue is driven by