Is Life all about Gossiping?

There is a saying that goes “Seeing is Believing”. And I believe most people believe in that saying. If you see a friend’s husband having lunch with another woman, most of the women that I know will say that he is having an affair. If she overheard a conversation about a married man sms-ing another married woman, she start to suspect that he is having an affair. If she sees that a man is nice to the maid, she starts to think that he has something for her.

It all these circumstances, the real details are not known. We only see one side of the picture – not the whole picture. And as a human’s folly is usually interpreted as human’s wisdom, we act on that limited knowledge, which could actually be nothing. The worst that could happen is for us to give advice to our friends based on that limited knowledge and being women, the highly emotionally charged women we are, we usually give advices that most times add fuel to fire.

An example, a woman saw her friend’s husband having lunch tete-a-tete with another woman. The gossip mongering would start almost immediately. Then she would consider herself to be in a dilemma, to tell or not to tell. She thought that by telling she would be doing her favour but she may not realise that at the point of telling, she may insinuate that the husband is having an affair and then go on to labelling the wife as a poor thing and the husband; a bastard.

Little did she know, it was not an affair – it was an innocent lunch and there were not two of them, there were 4 other and the 2 were buying food. And what a fiasco she had created. Her act of unwanted “kindness” or “kaypohness” caused a breakdown in a marriage.

In all cases that we see, we only see a fraction of that whole picture. And most humans will jump to conclusion, and they would leap even more if it would create a sensational story and maybe their lives would be even more exciting.

Recently, I got a sms from someone I knew in the middle of the night. In it, she said that she found out so-and-so’s husband had sex with the maid. She said that her maid told her. And so beware of all maids. That sms was a total waste of my time! What benefit do I get from that sms? And what benefit does she derive from this? I know some women would sms that same message to other friends because I would end up getting the same message twice. Don’t these people have anything better to do?

This is fitnah. In case you are not in the know, it is a sin if you are a Muslim. First, you did not see it. Second, you are putting down the reputation of others. In the Islamic law, we need at least 4 witnesses who must be people of character before we can say that someone has “berzina”. If you are not a Muslim, it is still defamation. You can be charged in court.

I find it strange that people would rather be engaged in these non-beneficial affairs like gossiping, bitching about others than doing good to others or even themselves. Why do some people derive pleasure from other people’s pain? And why can’t they see that our time here is limited? We have only one chance to make something good out of our lives and others as well. So why waste it on gossips and hearsays and things that we don’t know head or tail.