against the Sharia.

The same principle applies to those in authority: if you backbite a governor, a king, a president, or anyone of similar rank, you are not merely insulting him personally; you are also sabotaging his leadership. Slandering a ruler, minister, or monarch is nothing less than charging the subjects’ hearts with hostility toward their leaders. Once those hearts are inflamed, you have gravely wronged the people themselves, for such talk breeds chaos, fragments society, and sows division. Today it may be only volleys of words; tomorrow it could become volleys of arrows. When hearts are filled with hatred for their rulers, they will never submit to their commands: whatever good they are instructed to do will be perceived as evil.

A poet captured this truth when he said:
wa-ʿaynu ar-riḍā ʿan kulli ʿaybin kalīlah,
kamā anna aʿyuna as-sukhti tubdī al-masāwiʾ—
“An eye content overlooks every defect,
while an eye of anger brings every fault to light.”

Therefore, if you backbite any senior figure who holds authority over the Muslims—whether in religious leadership or in executive power—you are, perhaps unknowingly, harming the Muslim community at large. Some people imagine that such speech soothes the fire in their chests, yet how can one pour the full force of his rage onto a state of settled security, turning that security into fear, that stability into anxiety, or that trust in a scholar into suspicion? If your breast is boiling with anger, pour it out on yourself before you pour it on others. Look to your own shortcomings first: are you free of faults? Are you truly sound? Your very first flaw is that you revile and backbite those in authority. Someone may protest, “I only wish to enjoin what is right and forbid what is wrong.” We reply, “Your aim is noble, but houses are entered through their doors; this is not the proper way…”