“I talk about people. I know I am doing it and I do it anyway.”

If this is your sentence tonight, you are not the first to say it — and you are not being told anything is wrong with your iman. The tradition wrote down, in detail, what a person does about exactly this: not the theory of it, the treatment of it. Named masters, named books, numbered steps, and how long each one takes.

Two rules before any practice, and they are the tradition’s rules, not ours. First: one practice at a time, kept for two weeks, before you consider a second — the rush is the problem, not the cure. Second: do the practice and leave the result alone. Do not take your own spiritual temperature afterwards; the checking is itself a turning away.

The practices the book sends you to

• Keeping the tongue No added minutes
  A hard rule about backbiting, and the exact sentences that get you out of the conversation. — Section 10 — Adab With People
• Muhasaba of the tongue 1 watched hour + 1 min
  One hour a day watched, and one line about it at night. — Section 6 — Muhasaba
• A day without unnecessary speech One day a week
  One day a week in which you say only what actually has to be said. — Section 7 — Silence and Khalwa
• Find him seventy excuses Under a minute, at the moment it happens
  A fixed procedure for the moment you assume the worst about someone. — Section 3 — The Diseases of the Heart
• Never arguing about religion 10 sec each time
  Leaving the argument even when you are right, with the exit lines written in advance. — Section 10 — Adab With People

Where the first one comes from

Ghazali devotes Book 24 of the Ihya’ to the faults of the tongue, and lists them one by one — lying, argument, mockery, obscenity, tale-carrying, backbiting. He gives ghiba (backbiting) the longest treatment of them all. Muslim narrates the Prophet’s own definition: mentioning your brother with something he would dislike. Asked what if it is true of him, he answered that if it is true you have backbitten him, and if it is not, you have slandered him. The Qur’an compares it to eating the flesh of a dead brother (al-Hujurat 49:12).

Other sentences

• “I like being thought of as religious, and I have started to notice it.”
• “I look down on other people, and I know I do.”
• “I want more money and more things and it never stops.”