Q49 V12 on why backbiting is the same as eating one’s brother’s corpse.

This is a continuation of https://bit.ly/3n0jarb

Now to the expression ‘would any of you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother?’ in Q49 V12. The first word is ‘ayuhibu’, from ha and ba, hub; 8 forms of the word occurred 95 times in the Quran. And before we go into the obvious meaning of the word, which is ‘love’, let’s see how it got to be so.

You see, hub, is, really, said of seed-produce, whether small or large. It has been said to include grains of wheat, barley, lentils, rice, peas, kernels; stones of grapes, dates, pomegranates etc. And because life needs seeds for the continuity of life; there is a love of seeds, because through it, life is sustained. And so from that flows affection, love, to love, to prefer, core of the heart, loved one, a friend etc.

And so with the first word of this sentence, we already have the theme of food going on. And, again, Allah could have used any other word in Arabic within the scope of love, which they happen to have various words for, but the precision of the Quran is one that is unrivaled; so mathematical, absolute. Praise be to Him, the Most Eloquent, the Greatest.

In Arabic, like I wrote above, when one just says hub, it would be general, one would have to be specific to really communicate what type of love one is talking about. I have been able to document 21 stages of love so far, and I am sure, there are more expressions for love in the Arabic language. I would like to digress a bit with one liners on what they mean; starting with Hawa; which means attraction love, Sobwa; amusement love, A’laqat; attachment love, Wud; friendliness love, Wajd; preoccupation love, Shawq; longing love, Khulat; unification love, Garam; intensity love, Kalaf; infatuation love, I’shq; adulation love, Sha’af; passionate love, Shagaf; love that causes affliction, Najwa; heartburn love, Jawa; intense grief love, Wasob; excruciating pain and illness love, Istikana; unhealthy submissiveness kind of love, Tatayum; enslavement love, Tabl; malady love, Tadleeh; disorder love, WalaH; loss of reason love, Huyam; insanity love.

So by Allah using hub, the umbrella term; He is asking if one would, of any of the terms mentioned above, love to eat the corpse of one’s brother. Does one have appetite within the realm of the terms mentioned to the corpse of one’s brother? Even if one were a cannibal, one still wouldn’t long to eat the flesh of one’s deceased brother.

Now to the word ‘kul’ that’s translated to ‘eat’. It means to chew something, and then swallow it, something one drinks or swallows without chewing is called makul. One of the meanings of kul is also to be weak, tired, fatigued and the likes; and the relationship between tiredness and eating shouldn’t be too hard to understand considering the reality of niggeritis, which is the laziness, tiredness and even sleepiness one feels after eating.

So, combining chewing, swallowing and the fatigue that comes after; the question being posed becomes even heavier, because that means that the question isn’t just asking can one take a bite, and maybe spit it out? It is asking if one can stomach cutting one’s brother’s corpse up, clean the meat up, and prepare a festive meal, that one will eat till one becomes really full so that one then becomes tired, fatigued, weak, lazy and the likes.

The next word that follows is ‘lahm’, I would argue that that has to be the true origin of the word ‘lamb’, but of course, they gave it to the German word ‘lamm’; anyway, here, it was translated to ‘flesh’. Lam, ha and mim are the root letters, and 2 forms of it occurred a total of 13 times in the Quran.

Lahm is classically said of when threads are intertwined closely to make a cloth; the waft and the warp. And so a cloth is called lahm, and so is to patch it up, and that’s how it came to be used for skin or flesh, because that’s the cloth that covers our bones, and what patches us up when we tear by way of injury.

To understand meat in this way is important because of the themes that been talked about in this verse vis-à-vis slandering, libel, backbiting and the likes. Allegorically, one’s secret or own’s affair is something only one should know, what’s within one, something one has covered-up, and is now between one and Allah; the moment someone backbites one, and tells one’s affair, they are removing the patch, the cloth, the skin, the flesh, from one’s covered affair, and so backbiting is done. And when one reads and understands it this way, one is able to easily see why Allah has likened backbiting to eating one’s brother’s corpse.

The choice of the word ‘brother’ in this rhetorical-question expression is emphasized in the next verse where Allah mentions that all of mankind were created from Adam and Eve, and so we are all siblings, all of humanity. And in V10 above, He already expressly said all Muslims are brothers, siblings to themselves. And why dead? Dead, because, of course, he is not present; he could already be dead at the time one is going about gossiping about them without one knowing.

So, ‘would any of you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother?’ is a perfect expression of what really happens when one goes about telling tales that’s intended to unveil patches, covers, that one would rather not let the public or anyone else know.

If someone trusts one to tell one their secrets, or invites them to their home, or shows them something that the backbiter then thinks someone else would be eager to know, even though the backbiter knows that the victim wouldn’t want that information to be known to anyone else; then, the backbiter is doing more than biting one in the back; he is having a fill of the flesh of his dead brother.

Allah, in His Rahma ends the verse by reminding us of two of His names; tawabur raheem. He is the one and only that’s capable of accepting one’s repentance, and granting one forgiveness, and He is the Most Merciful.

So the Muslim is reminded that as soon as she or he notices that they’ve fallen into the vices highlighted in the verses above, they should not hesitate to seek forgiveness immediately, and try as much as possible not to go back to it.

To not seek forgiveness right away is to give shayton time to make one feel so guilty, that one then loses hope in the mercy of Allah, a state of mind that is antithetical to the Islamic faith; a muslim must always be certain of the mercy of Allah, and receptive and acceptive of the fact that once one truly repents for one’s sin, one’s sin has been forgiven.

It is said that Allah is pleased with the one that repents and then slips, and keeps repenting and slipping over and over because it shows that that sinner does not despair of Allah’s mercy, and he knows deep in His heart that Allah alone forgives sins, and directs His repentance to Him; and that that’s something the nonbeliever doesn’t do.

Hopelessness, really, negates a lot of Allah’s attribute, and in some places in the Quran, it was even likened to kufr. May Allah make us not despair of His mercies. Amin. May He grant us His mercies. Amin. May He make it easy for us to know sin as sin, and seek repentance right away. Amin. And may He make following His commandments easy for us. Amin.