The Bane of the Tongue

The Bane of Tongue (Kitab afat al-lisan) is Book 24 of the Imam al-Ghazali's magnum opus, I. ya. ulum al-din, The Revival of the Religious Sciences. Within the architecture of this monumental work, Afat al-lisan is the fourth book of the third quarter, The Ways to Perdition (Rub. al-muhlikat), in which al-Ghazali sums up in ten books (or chapters) all the human shortcomings and vices traditionally believed to lead a person into a state of loss in this world and the Next, and which in certain respects overlap with the Judeo-Christian notion of the seven deadly sins. In Book 24, al-Ghazali divides the banes (afat) or defects of the tongue, from the least to the most offensive, into twenty short chapters, each of which comprises a psychological/spiritual analysis of how and why the particular defect might exist in a person's soul, examples of how it manifests itself in behavior, and practical suggestions for eliminating it from one's personality. The misuse of the gift of speech and language is certainly not something new, as this work, composed nearly 950 years ago, amply shows, but in this age of internet-based communication, it has taken on a new and more destructive dimension.