Gossip is perhaps the main menace responsible for the biggest volume of lies. Gossip, including, backbiting (gheebah), slander, and more precisely calumny, (buhtaan), sows the seeds of unending dissension and pain in many Muslim communities. Our communities are festering with this disease. A student of mine, a Muslim girl who recently had become religious and joined the company of Muslim girls, told my class roughly the following: "My non-Muslim friends gossiped and lied too, but that was a rare annoyance. But when I began to hang out with Muslim girls, gossiping, lying, and belittling others were at a totally different level.

It is hard to get through one conversation with a friend without engaging in some kind of gossip about someone."

The Prophet said: "To convey all that one hears to others is sufficient to make one a liar." [Muslim]

Solution? Worry about the accuracy and impact of every word you utter—specially if you have friends in whose company you tend to engage in gossip, or who have a habit of gossiping with you. Be extra careful, and remind them again and again not to talk about others at all.