Thou hast written regarding thy aims. How blessed are these
aims, especially the prevention of back-biting! I hope that you may become
confirmed therein, because the worst human quality and the most great sin is
backbiting; more especially when it emanates from the believers of God. If some
means were devised so that the doors of back-biting could be shut eternally and
each one of the believers of God unsealed his tongue in the praise of the
other, then the teachings of His Holiness Baha’u’llah would be spread, the hearts
illumined, the spirits glorified and the human world would attain to
everlasting felicity.
I hope that the believers of God will shun completely
back-biting, each one praising the other cordially and believe that back-biting
is the cause of the Divine wrath, to such an extent that if a person back-bites
to the extent of one word, he may become dishonored among all the people,
because the most hateful characteristic of man is faultfinding. One must expose
the praiseworthy qualities of the souls and not their evil attributes. The
friends must overlook their shortcomings and faults and speak only of their
virtues and not their defects.
- ‘Abdu’l-Baha (From a Tablet to Dr. N.G.
Skinner, Washington, D.C., revealed August 12, 1913, at Ramleh, Egypt; Baha’i News,
no. 46, November 1930)
