 Praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds. We praise Allah and we seek His aid and we ask for His forgiveness. We seek His protection from the evil of ourselves and from the evil of our actions. Whomever Allah guides, none can misguide. And whomever Allah misguides, none can guide. I bear witness that there's no God but Allah alone. He has no like and I testify that Muhammad Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam is a slave and messenger. This is the first khutbah after the end of Ramadan and as we say farewell to our past Ramadan, we find ourselves in a moment of muhassabah. Muhassabah is a time of self-examination, a time to see how well we achieved the purpose of the month. And as we kept hearing throughout the month, Allah says that fasting was prescribed for you just as it prescribed for those before you so that you may gain taqwa. Now taqwa is one of those words that we hear often pretty much at the beginning of every khutbah. But taqwa is not just this vague word that's translated as piety, consciousness of God or the fear of God. Taqwa comes from the Arabic word for wakia, a shield. It literally means a shield. And so what we're constructing during Ramadan is a shield to protect ourselves, something to hold up, something that we can protect ourselves with against the ego of our very selves. And this has also been indicated in another hadith where the Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, says, So the Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam says, fasting is a shield. We use a different word in Arabic for a shield. Fasting is a shield. So when each of you fasts, let him not speak indecently, let him not act ignorantly. And even if a person fights him or insults him, let him say, I am fasting, I am fasting. And so here the Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, is informing us that the fasting person now has a shield. So that when people insult him and when they act against him and when they act rudely to him, he restrains himself with a newly gained power through his fasting, with a newly gained shield. And so he says, I'm fasting, I'm fasting. In other words, I'm above this pettiness. I'm above the insults. I'm above the fighting. And I'm stronger than his words and his words shall not hurt me. Unfortunately, the reality of some of us who fasts that instead of gaining patience out of fasting, we become more irritable. We become, you know, we ask people not to talk to us, not to nag us, not to annoy us. And fasting becomes an excuse to act horribly to the people around us, to our family, to our colleagues. And we'll say, oh, I'm fasting, as if that excuses our bad behavior. The Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, said, من لم يدع قول الزوري والعمل به فليس لله حاجة من أن يدع قعامه وشرابه. Whoever does not abandon false speech and acting on false speech, then Allah has no need for him to leave his food and drink. Think about this. There's no purpose in fasting. You may as well not do it, essentially. If you're still committing sins of the tongue, if you're still lying, you're still backbiting, gossiping, if you're still spreading rumors, still mocking people, insulting people and holding grudges, this is what the Prophet, Sallallahu Alaihi Wasallam, is telling us. And in the Quran, there's an entire surah. If you read it, you'll find that almost the entirety of the surah is dedicated to these sins of the tongue, these things that weigh us down. And that's in Surah al-Fujarat. And in the surah, not only does Allah tell us about these various things that are forbidden for us, but he also gets at what are the causes of these sins of the tongue. Why do people slander other people? Why do people spy on other people when it's spread rumors? Where does this come from? And so Allah says, ya ayyuha ladina amanu la yaskhara qauman min qauman asa'in yakoonu khayran minhum. Believers, let not some people mock other people for perhaps they are better than them. Walaa nisa'un min nisa'in asa'in yakoonu khayran minhum. And let not a group of women deride and mock another group of women for perhaps the ones mocked are better than the ones mocking. Walaa talmizu anfusakum walaa tanazabubil alqab. I do not taunt each other. I do not call each other names. Now look at the reasoning in this verse. Allah's advising those who are afflicted by the disease of gossiping about the faults of others, whether they do it openly or whether they do it through insinuation to question how much they actually know. Because perhaps they are better than you. Perhaps they are better than you. And so when this thought of speaking about the faults of others, about spreading things that we've heard about others comes to us, we should ask ourselves, do we really know with absolute certainty that whatever thing we want to talk about, whatever shameful thing we may have heard, are we sure that so-and-so actually did that thing? And even if we do know that he or she may have committed that thing, are we sure there was no justification in what he was doing? And then beyond that, maybe perhaps there was no justification, but perhaps there was a good intention and the person just misjudged his action. And even if he didn't misjudge his action and his intention was poor after all, how do you know that that person hasn't repented since committing that misdeed? And so what Allah is telling us is that we should, when these thoughts come to us, we should accuse ourselves first before we accuse others, because when we accuse others in the heart, this is what's known as Su'adun, bad opinion, and when we share that false accusation with others, that's when it becomes a Riba or a backbiting. Now, when the topic of Hussnaudun of maintaining good opinion of other people comes up, some people tend to think that maintaining a good opinion of other people is just simply naive. If we've heard something, you know, which is more realistic if we believe it. And yet, this objection isn't quite true, because Allah also says something else. He reminds us, وَلِلَّهِ الْعِزَّةُ وَلِهِ رَسُولِهِ وَلِ الْمُؤْمِنِينِ To Allah alone belongs honor, عِزَّة, and to His messengers and to the believers. In other words, Allah is telling us that it's categorically and factually known that your fellow believer has an honor and that he has a sanctity that cannot be violated and that their faults should not be exposed based on that sanctity. And so, when the thought of a bad opinion comes to you, you need to weigh it in this balance, weigh it between what is essentially an opinion, something you don't know for certain, and this statement of fact, a statement of certainty that Allah has told you, that the Muslim that I think may have done this misdeed, he has an inviolable honor, and there's a presumption of good opinion that comes with that honor that's gonna win out every time over the bad opinion. And so, we should not think it's only realistic to have a bad opinion of others, and that when we think negatively of a person that we just simply know in ourselves that negative impression is true. These bad opinions of others, these suggestions, these insinuations are not from the inside, that's the point. They come to your heart from the outside, and this is what's known as waswasa, they come from the shaitan in other words. And so, when we see a situation or we hear about a person and we can interpret what we saw or heard in a good light or a bad light, this is where the dangerous situation arises. It's the shaitan in this mahmal where in this place of interpretation that will whisper to us and suggest the worst possible interpretation of what we saw or the worst possible interpretation of what we heard, and suggest that that's actually the truth of what happened. And this poor opinion, this suspicion, we should cast away. In the same way that during Hajj we throw stones at the shaitan, we should cast stones at this thought because it's as though the shaitan is sitting beside us and feeding us these bad opinions of our fellow believers. And continuing in certain khujrat, Allah says, yaiyuhl ad-dina aamanu ijtanibu kathirum min ad-dun inna baaba ad-dunni ithim wala tajasasu. Believers avoid much suspicion. Verily, some suspicion is sinful and do not spy. And so suspicion then is the next step that happens here. After west-west of the shaitan, if we pursue it and we believe it, it becomes suspicion. And at this point, several of our scholars explain, this is where we become culpable for our evil thoughts of people. This is when suspicion becomes a sin, when we have started to believe it. And now after a person believes this basis, suspicion, he starts to spy on the person that he holds a poor opinion on because he wants to confirm his poor opinion on them. So you see people looking at other people's text messages and looking at their emails and asking others about, oh, what was he doing at this day at this hour? What was she doing at this day and at this hour? And so the cycle continues. They're looking to confirm their bad opinion and a love for business as well. Wala tajasasu because it becomes a never-ending cycle. This cycle just continues and worsens. First with whispers, then with maintaining a bad opinion of people and then a suspicion about those people that leads to spying and that spying leads to an inevitably worse opinion of people. And for those who are experienced in the world, you've seen this happen. Either you've been a victim of it, either you've been a perpetrator of it and we ask Allah's forgiveness and Allah's protection from this or you've observed this within other people. That's how it happens. It starts with something small and it grows and it grows and it grows and at each stage, there seem to be justifications for what's happening but at the end of the day, it's just sheytan leading you on. And in certain khujrat, what we're seeing then is that Allah's laying out these stages for us and at each stage, he's commanding us cease and desist now. Don't let this get worse. And so to summarize what we've been saying is that if at the first stage, a whisper comes to you, how do you stop this whisper by casting these out and by telling yourself this is a deception of sheytan? And then if you move to the second step of having a bad opinion, then you accuse yourself first for not having thought of the many reasons that your opinion is probably false. And then if you find yourself pursuing these suspicions, this is the third stage, then you accuse yourself for not having found an excuse for the person that you are suspicious of. Perhaps they had a good intention. Perhaps they have a dantoba from what you're suspicious of. And then if you find yourself spying on others, then you should stop knowing that this will only lead to further false positives and confirmation bias. And then Allah continues again, there's a fifth stage. Allah mentions this in the next verse, he says, wala yaghtab ba'adukum ba'adah ayyuhibbu ahadukum an yaakuna lahma akhihi meita. Do not backbite each other. Would each of you like to eat the dead flesh of his brother? Do not backbite each other. Would each of you like to eat the dead flesh of his brother? And so the cycle of destruction continues and that this person now who has spoken to other about his opinions, about his suspicions, about his spying and what he's found as though they're confirmed facts and he's spreading rumors, he's entered the realm of backbiting. And what we should know about rumors and backbiting is, it's not only for things that are false, even if the rumor is true, the sin of backbiting, the sin of riba still remains. And that's because at the end of the day, the heart of this matter is realizing that we have no right to publicize the fault of others, even if the fault of others are true. And beyond that, we should think, don't we have something higher to aim for than talking about other people's faults about this filth and this muck? Don't we as human beings as ennobled creatures have a higher purpose, something better to do than to stab our brothers in the back to pull out a piece of their dead flesh and let it wait until it rots, wait until it has an awful stench, wait until it's oozing juices and pus and eat that than to offer it to others to eat? Do we not have any higher purpose than this? And so when the satanic whisperer comes to speak about the faults of someone you don't like, imagine that this is what you're doing. Imagine that you have a dead carcass in front of you that you're eating of it and that you're offering it to others so that they may listen to your riba and eat of it as well. I'll say this and I ask Allah to forgive me and you and the Muslim women, so forgive him, he is the most merciful. In the name of Allah, and praise be to Allah, peace be upon him, and peace be upon the Messenger of Allah, peace be upon him, and peace be upon him. Another theme in certain hujarat is that backbiting and sins not only have an adverse personal effect in our relationships with others but they also have a corrosive effect civilizationally on notions and on communities because we notice in this verse that we've been reading from that Allah says, do not backbite each other. La ilta ba'udukum ba'udah, do not backbite each other because normally when a person speaks ill of a second person then that news of that ill speaking reaches that second person and that second person is tempted then speak ill of the first person so it goes both ways often. And also in the verse, the wording that Allah has chosen here is that he warns us against eating the dead flesh of your brother. Why brother specifically? This is because when we gossip, when we slander, when we shred rumors and follow our suspicions, these suspicions tend to be about people and involve people within the same community, within the people that are close to us, our families, our friends and colleagues. And backbiting a person who's close to you is like backbiting a brother, it's like stabbing a person in the back. It betrays that trust or friendship that you have. It tears families apart and it leaves communities divided. And this is directly addressed by Allah in Surat al-Khujrat as well in the verses just prior to these ones where Allah says, Inna man mu'minuna ikhwa, fa aslihu bayna akhwaykum, wattaq allaha la'allakum turhamoon. The believers are blood brothers, ikhwa, blood brothers, meaning they're like one family. So bring peace between your brothers. Allah is juxtaposing here two sets of verses, one between prohibiting backbiting and spying and this verse about the unity of the ummah. Speaking about the faults of others and spreading unverified rumors only brings discord and fitna and it serves no other purpose than to feed our own ego because by putting down others we feel as though we have somehow risen. And this is the scheme of shaitan from the very beginning. And it's the sixth and the final step in his plot to divide the believers. He hopes that the whispering that you initially feel, that subtle small thing in your heart that you may not be aware of or that might just come and go, he hopes that this will take hold and he will hope that this will lead to bad opinion, bad opinion to suspicion, to spying, spying to backbiting and backbiting to division. But being a believer means letting go of our ego. It means becoming a member of this greater ummah, that we bring peace between people by hiding other people's faults, hiding other people's faults in public. And if the situation does arrive that we come to know of some fault of your brother, some fault of one of your family members, that we privately advise them, that we speak to them directly and that we don't spread word about it to other people. This is, and furthermore, when we advise them that we do it with gentleness and we do it with sincerity. This is the literal meaning of nasiha. And furthermore, the great scholar Ibn Atala al-Skandiri, this is one of his definitions of the mu'min, of the believer. He says the mu'min, the mu'min is someone who gives sincere advice to his brother in private and who covers his faults in public. And if someone else tries to expose your brother, it means that he stands up for his honor, he stands up for his ezzah, his inviolable sanctity, because he has a right to remain covered, just as you have a right to remain covered. And this is what Allah's ending this verse was. He's saying, Allah ends it with, wattaq allaha la'allakum tur hamoon, have taqwa of Allah so that he may show you mercy or that he may be shown mercy. And here it is, taqwa again. Taqwa, the shield, this power of restraint that was the purpose of Ramadan. Allah is telling us to harness it, harness it with our tongues. Don't speak about and don't listen to the faults of others, whether they're real or whether they're imagined. And do not entertain a bad opinion of your fellow believer. Restrain yourself, have taqwa, and Allah will show you mercy by not revealing your sins. Don't you remember all the times when you lost strength? Don't you remember all the times when you had failings? And don't you wish with the deepest regret that those failings were erased and that they had never happened and that your record didn't contain them? Remember that dark moment because everyone is susceptible to faults and to flaws. And just as we would not want hours to be exposed into slightest, then we should not even come close to speaking about the faults of others. Have taqwa of Allah so that he shows you mercy. Allah says in his noble scripture,