Concealing The Faults of The Believers

Khutbah Opening

We seek refuge in Allah from the evil of our souls and from the evil of our deeds. Whomsoever He guides, none can misguide him, and whosoever He leads astray, none can guide him. I bear witness that there is no god but Allah, and that there is no partner for Him. I bear witness that Muhammad is His servant and Messenger — pure of heart, conveying the message and fulfilling the trust. He advised the ummah and left them on a clear white path whose night is like its day. Nothing escapes it but destruction. May the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him.

Allah Almighty says in His Noble Book — after we seek refuge in Allah from the accursed Satan:

O you who have believed, fear Allah as He should be feared, and do not die except as Muslims.

O mankind, fear your Lord, Who created you from a single soul and produced from that soul its mate, and made from their combination many men and women. So fear your Lord, Whom you ask each other by, and by the ties of kinship. Verily, Allah is ever watchful over you.

O you who believe, fear Allah and say that which is correct — that He will correct for you your deeds and forgive you your sins. And whoever obeys Allah and His Messenger, then they are indeed victorious.

The Story of Ma'iz al-Aslami

To proceed — there was a companion named Ma'iz al-Aslami, who made a severe, severe mistake and committed a major sin. He had committed zina when he had previously been married. And so after a while, his conscience ate at him and he went to Abu Bakr as-Siddiq. He told him what he had done. And so the response of Abu Bakr as-Siddiq was, "Did you tell anyone else about this?" He said, "No." And so Abu Bakr said, "Allah is forgiving and merciful. Go back, repent to Allah and conceal your sin."

Ma'iz then, after a while, went to Umar ibn al-Khattab. And Umar's response to Ma'iz was similar to Abu Bakr's. And then he went to a friend of his after, whose name was Hazal. And Hazal told him, "No — you have to go to Rasulullah ﷺ and you have to tell him about what you did."

And so he went to Rasulullah ﷺ. And the Prophet ﷺ, as was his norm when people would come and confess things, sought out ways to distance him from that act: "Are you sure about what you're talking about? Are you drunk? Are you insane?" — looking for excuses for this man. "Have you been married before?" He said, "Yes." And so after this man had continued to testify against himself and remove any sort of impediment that would protect him from the judgment, the Prophet ﷺ commanded for him to be stoned.

And then he turned to Hazal — the man who had inspired Ma'iz to come — and he said:

(Abu Dawood, Hadith 4377)

"If you had covered him up with your garment, it would have been better for you."

Abu Bakr had told this man: stay away. You committed a sin between yourself and Allah. Don't expose yourself. Conceal yourself with the garment of Allah.

And so today I wanted to talk about this concept of concealing your faults — concealing the faults of the believer. There are two parts to this: concealing your own faults, and concealing the faults of someone else.

Part One: Concealing Your Own Faults

When it comes to your own faults, the Prophet ﷺ says:

"All of my ummah are forgiven — every one of us will be forgiven — except الْمُجَاهِرُونَ." The companions said, "Who are the مُجَاهِرُونَ, O Messenger of Allah?" He said: those who commit a sin at night and Allah conceals their sins, and then they go out in the morning and say, "Oh so and so, I did such and such." They uncover the cover of Allah.

These are people who no one would have known what they did privately in their house. No one would have known what they did when they were with their friends on a particular day. No one would have known what they did privately — yet they go out publicly and expose themselves. They tell others of what they did. "Oh so and so, I did such and such last night."

In our day and time, it's by tweeting it. In our day and time, it's by snapping it. In our day and time, it's by putting it on your "For You" page — putting it on other people's "For You" pages. It is exposing the cover of Allah. And the Prophet ﷺ says everyone is forgiven except for those who expose themselves.

Now a question becomes — and this is how Shaytan comes to people — Shaytan comes and says: if you conceal your sins, then you're a munafiq. You don't want to be someone who's two-faced. You're trying to be all righteous in public but privately you commit all of this. So for you to have integrity, you must expose your own sins so that everybody knows what you do in public and what you do in private.

But concealing sins is not hypocrisy. Concealing sins is iman. Because the Prophet ﷺ told us to conceal our sins. And when a person exposes their sins — a lot of people don't pay attention to this — you become an agent in normalizing that sin. You become another person making it more familiar to everybody. You become another person who is introducing people to things they might not otherwise be introduced to. You become somebody who other people can point to and say, "this person does it, and this person does it, and this person does it — so why don't I do it?"

And one of the benefits of concealing your sins is that it allows you to grow out of those sins without them ever becoming part of your identity.

I had a friend once who told me, "Alhamdulillah, I gave up smoking. I finally gave up. I've been struggling with it and I finally gave up." I said to him, "When did you start?" I was shocked — because this friend of mine, we were teenagers together, we spent teenage summers together, we traveled together, we were in cars for hours together, and I never knew this person smoked. But the reason why I didn't know is, number one, I wasn't looking for it — but number two, because he himself made it a point that he hid this aspect of himself, even from someone very close to him.

And what that allowed him to do was to resolve it in his own time, at his own pace. He never identified as a smoker. It never became part of who he was. He was allowed to struggle with it and suffocate with it privately until Allah protected him from it eventually. And that is a gift that we give ourselves when we don't expose our own sins and our own vices — you allow yourself to grow out of it naturally.

Part Two: Exposing the Sins of Others

The Prophet ﷺ says:

(Sunan Abu Dawood, Hadith 4880)

"O you who believe with your tongue while iman has still not entered into your hearts — do not seek to follow the awrat of the Muslims. Don't try to seek out the mistakes of the Muslims. Don't try to expose the private matters of the Muslims. Because whoever seeks to expose the private matters of the Muslims, Allah will seek out their faults. And whoever Allah intends to seek out their faults, Allah will expose them even if they are in their own private domain."

And Allah says:

Don't spy on one another.

Abdullah ibn Mas'ud was once told of a man about whom they said, "Alcohol is dripping from his beard in his house." And Abdullah ibn Mas'ud said:

"We have been prohibited from spying. And whatever comes to us that is apparent, then we deal with it." He's saying: if a person does something privately in their house, we have been prohibited from spying. I don't care what a person is doing privately in their house. I have not been obligated to go and chase down, knock on doors, and try to seek to uncover people. That's incredibly damaging to a society.

And there is an even more — to me — profound statement by Mu'awiyah r.a., which is a hadith that Mu'awiyah himself reports from the Prophet ﷺ. He says that Rasulullah ﷺ said:

(Sunan Abu Dawood, Hadith 4888)

"If you seek to follow the mistakes of people, أَفْسَدْتَهُمْ — you corrupt them — أَوْ كِدْتَ أَنْ تُفْسِدَهُمْ — or you might corrupt them."

And so Abu Darda responded to this statement and said: this is a statement the Prophet ﷺ spoke and Mu'awiyah heard, and Mu'awiyah benefited from it — because Mu'awiyah became the khalifah. And so the idea is: if you seek out the faults of people, you will corrupt them.

Let me give you an example. You have a parent who is always digging through their kid's stuff — always going through their drawers, opening their notebooks, trying to read what they write, opening up their journals. Imagine a father who is reading the diary of his daughter. She's 13 or 14 years old. He finds that she wrote a boy's name with a heart and an arrow — all that type of stuff. It explodes. The whole family has a tribunal for this girl. And all of a sudden, she went from a simple crush that might have passed, to now everybody accusing her of dating, accusing her of this and that. And it can grow and grow and grow.

Now that she has been exposed for something she didn't even do — especially if the accusations go far beyond just a crush — how do people respond to things like that? "If I'm going to do the time, I might as well do the crime. They're already accusing me of this anyway. They're already saying that I'm this anyway." How many a young person do you hear saying, "My family already thinks that I'm this and this and this — so..."

And so Mu'awiyah is saying that Rasulullah ﷺ said: if you seek out the faults of people, you don't allow them — like my friend who was smoking cigarettes and eventually grew out of it — to resolve it in their own time. But if everybody had exposed him, if everybody had known that this is his habit and this is what he does, it becomes a lot more difficult to resolve. It becomes a lot more difficult.

And the Prophet ﷺ says in another hadith:

(Sunan Abu Dawood, Hadith 4889)

"When a ruler seeks to make doubt amongst the people — or find doubt against the people — he corrupts them."

So number one: not seeking to expose your own faults. And number two: not seeking to expose the faults of others.

Second Khutbah: When Is Exposing a Fault Permitted?

A common question that comes with this then is: but what about so and so? What about an abuser? What about someone who is harming people?

The scholars of course made exceptions. The default is that people's faults are to be protected — to be concealed. The Prophet ﷺ says:

(Sahih Muslim, Hadith 2699)

"Whoever conceals the faults of a believer, Allah will conceal their faults in the dunya and the akhirah."

Especially if a person has repented. One brother was complaining to me — he said, "Can you imagine — a friend came to my house and told my kids about things I used to do 20 or 30 years ago. Exposing me to my own children." He said, "I wanted to kick him out of the house." Especially when people have moved on in their lives — for someone to come and bring back what they did 10, 15, or 20 years ago that they had buried — it's even more horrible.

But the scholars answered the question of who are the exceptions. Imam an-Nawawi mentions six categories in which it is not backbiting to mention something about a person:

1. Oppression (Tazallum)

If a person has wronged you and you are taking them to court or taking action against them within the community, that is not exposing the sins of a believer unlawfully.

2. Seeking Assistance to Remove a Munkar

There is a community vice or a number of actors doing harm to a community — not necessarily to me personally, but it is a wrong that is happening. If a person really believes this is required in order to change a munkar, then it becomes acceptable.

3. Seeking a Fatwa

I am coming to the sheikh and I have to mention something my father is doing, something my brother is doing, something my wife is doing. Hind bint Utbah came to Rasulullah ﷺ and said, "Abu Sufyan is a stingy man" — her husband, Abu Sufyan, the leader of Quraysh at the time — "Is it allowed for me to take money from him without him knowing? He doesn't give me enough." He wouldn't have liked for that to be mentioned in the presence of Rasulullah ﷺ. And yet, the Prophet ﷺ said to her: "Yes — take with what is reasonable." The scholars still mention: if you can avoid mentioning names even in seeking fatwa, that is better. But if a person must, then it is allowed.

4. Warning Muslims of Harm

Permissible by the consensus of the Muslims — and it could even be obligatory. If someone is taking advantage of others, mishandling money, stealing, committing fraud — whatever it is — that person is someone who should be exposed.

5. The Fasiq Openly Known for Their Vices

Imam Ahmed said there is no sanctity for a fasiq who is publicly exposing themselves. Everything we have been talking about concerns a person who is otherwise dignified and has a vice they are trying to resolve. But someone who is publicly open about their sins — who is celebrating their sins — talking about them is not exposing their sins. They are exposing plenty already.

6. Identification

There are many scholars whose names are not particularly flattering — like al-A'mash (the one with blurry vision) or al-A'raj. Or when you're trying to identify someone and you say, "which Ahmed?" — there are 10 Ahmeds — and you fill in the blank with a descriptor that isn't something they would particularly like, but it serves as an identifier. The scholars said that is okay as long as that person is okay with it. But if they are not okay with it, then it becomes haram. And Allah knows best.

Closing

These are just some guidelines with regards to concealing faults. And in a time and place when everybody seems to be exposing either their faults or the faults of others, we ask Allah to make us of those whose faults are concealed in the dunya and the akhirah — those who are gathered with the prophets and the martyrs and the righteous and the truthful, who are the most excellent of companions.

We ask Allah to make us of those who, when we experience the private meeting with Allah — when He brings us close to Him and mentions our sins to us — it is said to them: "I concealed your sins in the dunya, and I am forgiving you for them now." May Allah allow us to hear the speech and follow the best of it.