Please find below a special gift for those who have been donating so generously to our Iftar campaign: Ramadan Reflection 13 – Taming The Tongue If the ears are the receptors and eyes are the lenses, the tongue is the voice of the heart. It articulates all the feelings and emotions that are generated inside the heart. No one knows what is in the heart of other people and only when the tongue speaks on behalf of the heart the world gets to learn about the sea of emotions that resides in there. The tongue can cause you a great deal of distress and it can give you tremendous amount of pleasure. It can cause war and it can make peace. It can destroy relationships and it can heal deepest wounds. It can generate love and it can make archenemies. It is simply the most powerful tool available to human beings. Safeguarding it would guarantee you heaven and letting it loose will take you to the depth of hell. All organs in the body are in constant fear of the tongue. There is a saying of the blessed Prophet that tells us how the body and the tongue have regular conversations. The body says to the tongue - “Be conscious of God concerning us, for we are dependent on you. If you remain decent we will remain decent and if you become corrupt we will become corrupt.” (Tirmidhi) Tongue is a Divine gift for the most important feature of human beings - communications. Can you imagine if you could not express your feelings? What if God took away your ability to use your tongue to express yourself? There would be storms of emotions inside you but there would be no outlet, no way of articulating them. Life would be extremely challenging but it could happen! God reminds us that He has given us the ability to speak and we should not become arrogant or complacent about it. Have you not seen many people who have lost their ability to speak? There are some who are unable to speak from birth? These are challenges for those people but even bigger challenge for those of us who still have the ability to speak. Our challenge is to show humility and gratitude. The more beneficial our tongue is the more we are in control of it. The blessed Prophet said: “Whoever believes in God and the Last Day should speak good or keep silent.” In other words be honest or keep quiet. Speaking good and having honest conversation are two of the most important features of Islamic communication framework. Speaking good about someone includes not indulging in backbiting or slandering. Backbiting is defined very simply in Islam. The blessed Prophet once said to his companions: Do you know what backbiting is?" They said, "God and His Messenger know best." He then said, "It is to say something about your brother or sister in their absence that they would dislike." Someone asked him, "But what if what I say is true?" The Messenger of God said, "If what you say about them is true, you are backbiting, but if it is not true then you have slandered." (Muslim) Truth may hurt but it is best to speak face to face with the relevant person sensitively than to speak behind their back. It enables the person to explain and explore the issues more personally and if there are matters to be resolved it gives them an opportunity to consider a way forward that could work for the mutual benefit of all parties. The tongue must be controlled so that you are able to speak the truth without destroying the other persons self-esteem or honour. A believer’s tongue speaks good or stays quiet! The blessed Prophet said in his speech during the farewell pilgrimage, “Indeed the blood, property and honor are sacred to you, like the sacredness of this day (day of pilgrimage), like the sacredness of this place (valley of A’rafah), like the sacredness of this month (Dhul Hijja); Have I conveyed the message?” (Bukhari) The Prophet is clear and emphatic in his message; a believer’s tongue must be used to safeguard the blood, property and honour of people. He did not hesitate to challenge anyone who involved himself or herself in such a sickly practice including. He rebuked Ayesha, his own wife, who made a hand gesture to the Prophet about a woman who came to visit her that she was from a low social class. The Prophet expressed his deep displeasure at the action of Ayesha and immediately told her that she had backbitten. Slandering is another evil that is prevalent in our society today. People make up stories about other people and then as it spreads, people from all walks of life hear about it, they believe it and they start spreading it. Before long, an entire community and in the world of instant communication, the entire world comes to learn about it. Unfortunately, there is no shame in telling a lie about someone and there is no crime in exposing someone with a few white lies. A believer’s tongue always refrains from attributing lies against others and when such lies appear in front of them they use their tongue to challenge them and demand for evidence. God strongly censures people who entertain slander or backbiting in the following verse: “Woe to every slanderer and backbiter.” (Quran 104:1) There must be honesty in your conversation but there is a difference between speaking honestly and simply creating a drama seeking attention. Have you come across people who shout and scream all in the name of getting it off their chest? Have you heard of those people who use abusive language because they are too angry? They lose control of their tongue and they blame everyone else but themselves. In a recent article published by the Psychology magazine one particular article caught my attention. The article uses a provocative headline, where it asks, “should you say what you really mean?” I say, yes, you must say what you mean and mean what you say to the relevant person but never backbite or slander. A believer knows the dire consequences of backbiting or slandering tongue. In the Quran it has been equated to the eating of the flesh of a dead human being. When you speak think about what you are saying and think about how the other person is feeling about what you have just said. Some people have a bad habit of thinking after they have inflicted the damage. It’s too late to think after you have lashed out with your razor sharp tongue and caused the verbal carnage. Such a tongue could cause all sorts psychological problem for the person who has been at the receiving end of the abuse. A believer speaks with the will to bring the best out of the other person and not to inflict damage or simply use his or her tongue to take revenge. Speaking the truth also includes speaking for fairness and justice. A believer is not scared of using his or her tongue to challenge evil, oppression, tyranny and shamelessness. Pervasive social immoral practices must be challenged through intellectual and rationale discourse. This requires an articulate tongue to shed wisdom and light into the depth of darkness and rouse human conscience to return to its natural state of Fitra (purity and innocence). The tongue is an essential tool for generating moral renaissance but this tongue must be trained and tamed for the best outcome. A loose tongue is destructive and recipe for disaster but a trained tongue is the reminder for the lost souls and misguided masses. The tongue must be used for the benefit of people. It must be controlled so it does not harm others or you. The saying of the blessed Prophet declares a person with abusive tongue a person outside the fold of the faith. He said, “S/he is not a believer from whose hand and tongue his/her neighbour is not safe”. If you let your tongue loose and it flings abuse and diminishes their quality of life, you have seized to be a Muslim. While this may sound harsh, but it is an essential requirement that a believer knows how to safeguard his or her neighbour from their abusive language. Tongue can cause untold misery to the people of the world. We do not have to go very far in history to see the impacts of the evil words from the tongues of wicked people. In the last century alone we have witnessed the vile words of Hitler that brought the Holocaust on the Jewish people, the hatred spread by the words of Slobodan Milosevic caused the genocide of the Bosnian people and the bloodbath in South Africa caused by the racist rhetoric of the Apartheid regime. The evil hatred they harboured in their hearts was expressed by words from their tongue. Such people will always be remembered with disgust and be cursed. They are shameful scar in human history. In the twisted world of hypocrisy and double standards, moral relativism and extreme materialism the society expects the public figures to have a moral and ethical restraint of their tongue. So if a politician makes one mishap, one slip of the tongue, one wrong word used or one foul word slipped in a public speech or interview, he or she will have all hell breaking lose on them. The irony is the masses find and relish in such filth in their private time. Lose tongue not a problem for some of these people! Islam takes a very different approach. It requires the believers to learn to only speak good or stay silent. Public or private space, a believer’s language must be consistently clean and ethical. Tongue can announce good news, give rise to blossoming romance and love, encourage cohesion and make peace. The real positive feelings that reside in the heart must be expressed using the tongue. A couple expressing their love for each other using appropriate language could bring the couple closer together. Parents using words of encouragement could boost the confidence of their children as they embark on the uphill path of life. A teacher praising his student could nurture the hidden talent in a student. A good team leader, supervisor or line manager uses words of encouragement to motivate his or her team to do better. All these are simply achieved through words uttered by the tongue. Revolutions to topple dictators and despots in our lifetime have come as a result of a few simple yet very powerful words. These were shared and ignited the passion of people who roared onto the streets of their town centres. Words upon words have rewritten the human history and the same powerful tool has shaped events around us in the last couple of year in countries from Tunisia to Libya and Egypt to Turkey. The media, television, radio, Internet, social network, all rely on words that are generated from the tongue of people. The entire world today communicates instantly because human beings could share their words at super-speed. They could be available to send their words with a click of a button. Never has there been a greater need to train our tongue to generate more beneficial words than today. We stand at the peak of human achievement and supreme technological advancement but the most basic need to tame and train our tongue remains the yardstick that will mark our pathway to a better future. The power of the tongue is truly realized in the following words of the Prophet. He said, “The faith of God’s worshippers will not be upright until their heart is upright and their heart will not be upright until their tongue is upright.” (Ahmed) If fasting in the month of Ramadan is all about connecting with God and manifesting this connection in your interpersonal relationships, your tongue is the most important organ that needs to be brought under control. If you learn how to use it well, you will make peace all around you. You will find the light of God illuminate inside and around you. Your destination will be the eternal bliss in the company of the prophets and pious people in the paradise. Your life would have been a success. If you let your lose tongue rule you, devastation and havoc will engulf your life. People will hate you. Your friends and families would detest you. Your workplace would isolate you. Your neighbours would turn against you. You will live a lonely, miserable and pathetic life. Your place will be the hellhole tormenting your vile and disgusting tongue. Your life would have been a waste. The best discipline you could prescribe your tongue so that it learns to tame itself and say things in measures and wisdom is the perpetual remembrance of God. Making God your constant companion will enable you to learn to focus on using beneficial words. Someone who is the true Power and Master of the universe is closely watching you. Remember that God’s omnipresence in your life means your every action is being recorded in real time. Realising that the harvest of your tongue will become part of your final accountability will help you to straighten your tongue. Taking control of your tongue will certainly provide you the greatest success in this world and the world to come. © Ajmal Masroor August 3, 2013
Posted on: Sat, 03 Aug 2013 03:10:03 +0000
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