keep silent. If only we would hold fast to that rule in our daily lives: “Whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day should speak good or keep silent.”

A statement may be good in and of itself, or its goodness may lie in the aim behind it. Thus, enjoining what is right and forbidding what is wrong (al-amr bi-l-maʿrūf wa-n-nahy ʿani-l-munkar) and teaching a point of religious knowledge are forms of speech that are intrinsically good. Other words are not, by themselves, devotional, yet you utter them to put your companion at ease and open his heart; this too is good. Although such speech is not an act of worship in itself, it is not sinful, and your intention is to lift your companion’s spirits and bring him joy—so it comes under the heading of goodness as well.

From this we understand that anyone who fails to speak good has a deficiency in his belief in Allah and the Last Day. How, then, about someone who actually speaks evil? What of the person who—Allah protect us—devours people’s flesh through backbiting, spreads slander among them, lies, and cheats? And what of the one who goes further, stirring up hostility against the scholars, reviling them, and censuring them over matters in which they are in fact nearer to the truth than he imagines? That is far graver still, for speaking about the scholars is nothing like speaking about ordinary folk. When you talk about ordinary people you may wound only the individual himself, but when you speak against the scholars you injure both the scholars and the knowledge of the Sharia they carry, because