For God’s Sake’ Hold Thy Tongue

Q.1. What do the Quran and the traditions of the Prophet (S.A.W) tell us on backbiting and scandal – mongering?
Ans. Both the Quran and the traditions of the Prophet (S.A.W) condemn and criticize backbiting and scandal – mongering. The Holy Quran curses such people and the Hadith compares them to a person eating the flesh of his dead brother.

Q.2. What do the Gita and the Bible tell us on backbiting?
Ans. a Gita says that the freedom from the habit of backbiting is a quality of a person who is born to God-like endowments. The Bible says that a person who doesn’t stumble in what he says, is a perfect man.

Q.3. What do the Granth Sahib and Lord Budha tell us on backbiting?
Ans. The Granth Sahib says that the slanderer or the backbiter is always burdened by the load of his sins. Lord Budha in his eightfold path says that one requires living a life based on right speech.

Q.4. Why did the servant of Rabbi Simeon bring tongue both the times?
Ans. The servant of Rabbi Simeon brought tongues both the times because he considered the tongue as a source of both good as well as evil. There was nothing better than a good tongue and nothing worse than an evil one according to him.

Q.5. Why did Rabbi Simeon invite his disciples for a meal?
Ans. Rabbi Simeon invited his disciples for a meal in order to teach them a valuable lesson. He served -both the soft and hard tongues at the meal. The disciples ate the soft ones and left the hard ones untouched. On this Rabbi told them that as they preferred soft tongues to harder ones for eating, they should always use soft tongue in the conversation too.

Q.6. What according to you is the moral of the lesson?
Ans. The moral of the lesson is that backbiting and scandal-mongering are big evils of our society. We must always refrain from such malice.

Q. 7. How does our tongue do good or bad to others?
Ans. When we use our tongue softly and politely it spreads happiness