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Is backbiting haram in all the cases?

Q:

Is backbiting haram in all the cases?

A:

Backbiting is haram as per Qur’an, 49:12. But there are exeptions to it, where one can backbite about the other person if the other person falls in the following category:

  1. Giving a genuine advise on someone, eg: your opinion to a person who is seeking x person as his/her partner.
  2. A person who has treated you unjustly
  3. A person accusing a momin for something
  4. If someone claims a genealogy to which he doesn’t belongs
  5. One who openly commits sins
  6. One who openly speaks or writes against Islam
  7. Backbiting a person who spreads a bid’ah in the community
  8. Asking a ruling from Mujtahid where one needs to expose others
  9. Backbiting a person to safeguard him from a potential threat
  10. To identify someone as he is well known like blind, deaf etc These are few categories in which backbiting is permitted. Sheikh Ansari in his famous book al-Makasib (vol. 1 pg. 171) discusses this topic with much detail. For specific cases in each of the categories one needs to seek the fatwa of his marja.

Shaykh Kumail Rajani