Conclusion
In his Name, be He glorified!
And there is nothing but it glorifies Him with praise.(17:44)
Concerning Backbiting
In the Fifth Point of the First Ray of the First Light of the Twenty-Fifth Word, a single Qur’anic verse having the effect of discouraging and restraining was shown to induce repugnance at backbiting in six miraculous ways. It was shown too how abominable a thing is backbiting in the view of the Qur’an, and that there is therefore no need for any further explanation of the subject. Indeed, after the Qur’an has made its declaration, there is neither the possibility nor the need for anything further.
The Qur’an reproaches the backbiter with six reproaches in the verse:
Would any among you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother?(49:12)
and forbids him to commit this sin with six degrees of severity. When the verse is directed to those persons actually engaged in backbiting, its meaning is the following.
As is well-known, the “hamza” at the beginning of the verse has an interrogative sense. This interrogative sense penetrates all the words of the verse like water, so that each word acquires an additional meaning. Thus the first word asks, with its “hamza:” “Is it that you have no intelligence capable of discrimination, so that you fail to perceive the ugliness of this thing?”
The second word “like” asks: “Is your heart, the seat of love and hatred, so corrupted that it loves the most repugnant of things?”
The third word “any among you” asks: “What befell your sense of social and civilized responsibility that you are able to accept something poisonous to social life?”
The fourth word “to eat the flesh” asks: “What has befallen your sense of humanity that you are tearing your friend apart with your fangs like a wild animal?”
The fifth word “of his brother” asks: “Do you have no fellow-feeling, no sense of kinship, that you are able to sink your teeth into some wretch who is tied to you by numerous links of brotherhood? Do you have no intelligence that you are able to bite into your own limbs with your own teeth, in such lunatic fashion?”
The sixth word “dead” asks: “Where is your conscience? Is your nature