Is it considered backbiting when one tells the manager of the company, which he is working for, about a colleague who has got weak performance or who is inadequate in protecting the company's interests?
A Brief Description of the Question:
Is it considered backbiting when one tells the manager of the company, which he is working for, about a colleague who has got weak performance or who is inadequate in protecting the company's interests?
The Answer:
Backbiting, which is prohibited in Islam, is not haram in some cases. One of these cases is when one complains. It is not backbiting to tell the manager of the company on someone who causes damages to the company. However, there must not be any personal interests involved in this case.
The person whose negative aspects you complain about to your employer is someone who can – at least in your opinion – improve his negativity. For instance, your neighbor’s child throws rubbish in your garden and you go up to his parents and ask them to prevent their child from doing so; your workfellow wrongs you and you go up to your employer and ask him to protect your rights. We must pay attention to the following:
• There must be bad deeds of a person. This bad deed must not be related to his private life but it must be obvious and must clearly harm you or others. If this bad deed is not related to infringing your or someone else’s rights, you have not got the right to report him to anyone. For instance, your neighbor drinks alcohol secretly in his private life. He hides it because he knows that it is a fault. Probably, he is regretful and wants to quit it; yet we do not know. When we discover this secret habit of his, we cannot report him to anyone, even to someone who can make him quit this habit. Actually, if we do it, we make the mistake of revealing a secret fault of someone’s, which is a grave sin.
• When you complain, you only report. You do not insult, mix your anger into your complaint. If you tell untrue things in your report because of your anger, then you will be slandering or insulting. However, it is not insulting if you are telling the truth. If you are sure that he stole something, you are rightful to start your speech by saying “that thief”; or if he swore, you are rightful to start with “that immoral man”; because, he actually did it and deserved to be called so.
• The person whom you report him to must not be anyone or a friend of yours, but must exactly be the person who is in charge of solving the problem. If a neighbor of yours is not responsible for solving your problem with another neighbor, you cannot complain to that neighbor about the other one. Moreover, let us suppose that you have found someone who can really solve your problem with that neighbor. In this case, you must not complain to him about your neighbor in front of others, but only to him alone.
• Those who complain about their sibling to another sibling of theirs, about one of their relatives to another relative, about a friend to another friend and about their spouse to a friend must be very careful. Most of the time, the person to whom we complain is not someone who can solve the problem. What he can only do, generally, is to have prejudice about us or to pass what we have said on to someone else, or to alienate himself from us in order to get rid of our complaints. While trying to take revenge on someone, we happen to reveal a negative aspect of ours by reporting him to an irrelevant person; and because of this, our spiritual side weakens and because we have chosen to take revenge through this way, we will be deprived of our right of revenge in the presence of God.
You may say “Shall I keep the unfairness to myself in order not to complain?” No, you should not keep it. However, the right way of fighting against unfairness is not to smile at people’s faces and then to backbite them. Unfairness cannot be fought against by hypocrisy. Human dignity requires one to express wrongness in front of the wrongdoer bravely and publicly. Wrongness and unfairness cannot be fought against by complaints made secretly and mixed with untrue information which cannot be backed up. It can only pave the way for mischief. In a law state which has got a proper, trustful and quick law system, someone who has been wronged can resort to the court and seek his rights.
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