The 365 · Tazkiyah · Day 214 · Tongue
Laʿn · The Cursing Tongue
The disease
اللَّعْن
Laʿn
Why it's named first
Because the Prophet ﷺ said: 'The believer is not a curser, nor a slanderer, nor obscene, nor foul-mouthed' (Tirmidhī 1977). Four characteristics excluded from the believer in one hadith. And he ﷺ: 'Cursing a Muslim is fusūq (transgression), and fighting him is kufr' (Bukhārī 48, Muslim 64). Laʿn is the act of invoking Allah's distance/curse on someone. The Prophet ﷺ forbade it not only for its harm to the cursed but for what it does to the curser: he becomes, by the Prophet's ﷺ naming, the opposite of a believer. And the laʿnah, if it does not land on its intended target (because the target did not deserve it), 'rises to the heavens, finds the gates closed, returns to the earth, finds them closed, then turns back toward the one who said it' (Abū Dāwūd 4905). The curse boomerangs.
In the Qur'an
'Allah does not love the public utterance of evil speech, except by one who has been wronged' (al-Nisāʾ 4:148). The verse permits the wronged to speak about their wronging in narrow circumstances, but not to curse. And: 'There is on them the curse of Allah, the angels, and all mankind' (al-Baqarah 2:161): the curse Allah uses against specific categories of disbelievers, not what we throw casually at people who irritated us.
In the Sunnah
Bukhārī 48, Muslim 64: 'cursing a Muslim is fusūq.' Tirmidhī 1977: 'the believer is not a curser.' Abū Dāwūd 4905: the curse returns to the curser if undeserved. Muslim 2598: a man cursed his camel; the Prophet ﷺ said: 'leave it; it is cursed.' The Companions left the camel. The Prophet ﷺ would not allow his caravan to include something marked by an unjust curse.
The cure
Replace the curse with duʿā for guidance. When the Companions wanted the Prophet ﷺ to curse the mushrikūn after Uḥud, he said: 'I was not sent as a curser; I was sent as a mercy' (Muslim 2599). The Sunnah is not to curse even your declared enemies; to ask guidance for them or refuge from them. Practical: 1) Audit your speech for curses (small ones too: 'damn,' 'curse you,' 'may you suffer'); replace each with 'may Allah guide him' or 'may Allah protect us'; 2) When tempted to curse a person, take wudūʾ and pray two rakʿāt; the impulse will pass; 3) Teach your children that the believer does not curse; replace the language reflexively; 4) Even cursing animals, objects, time, is forbidden (the Prophet ﷺ: 'do not curse time, for Allah is time,' Bukhārī 4826).
What is at stake
Laʿn poisons the curser's tongue, character, and akhirah. The Prophet ﷺ said: 'the cursers will not be intercessors or witnesses on the Day' (Muslim 2598). They lose the right of shafāʿah and shahādah on the most consequential day. And in this world, the cursing tongue creates a household, a workplace, a community where Allah's mercy is replaced with Allah's distance in the speaker's own air. The believer is named by his speech; the curser names himself out of the category.
A du'a for this day
Allāhumma in-nī aʿūdhu bika min lisān al-laʿn. (O Allah, I seek refuge in You from a cursing tongue.) And the Prophet's ﷺ substitute for the impulse: 'allāhumma ihdihim,' O Allah, guide them.
A reflection to carry
Read the Prophet's ﷺ four-trait exclusion: 'laysa al-muʾmin bi-l-ṭaʿān, wa lā al-laʿān, wa lā al-fāḥish, wa lā al-badhīʾ.' The believer is not the one who attacks, not the curser, not the obscene, not the foul-mouthed. Four categories of speech excluded from īmān. Laʿn is the second. Ya akhī, ya ukhtī, our culture has made cursing casual. 'Damn it.' 'Curse him.' 'May he suffer.' These leave our mouths reflexively when irritated. The Prophet ﷺ forbade them all. And he attached a chilling consequence: if the curse does not find a valid target, it rises, finds the gates of heaven closed against it, returns, finds the earth's paths closed, and turns back on the one who said it. The laʿnah we throw lands on us when undeserved by the target. And in moments when we are most tempted to curse (the driver who cut us off, the politician who outraged us, the family member who hurt us), the Prophet ﷺ modeled a complete replacement: ihdihim, guide them. The curse becomes a duʿā. The act of mercy heals the speaker's tongue and may, by Allah's mercy, soften the listener's heart. The believer's tongue is a tongue of mercy, not of distance-invocation. Train it.
Read the longer reflection
Yā Rabb, the Prophet ﷺ told the Companions: 'I was not sent as a curser; I was sent as a mercy.' After the Battle of Uḥud, where he ﷺ had lost teeth and Ḥamzah's body had been mutilated, when the Companions asked him to curse the Quraysh, he refused. He said: 'I was sent as a mercy.' Even from inside the freshest wound, his tongue would not curse. Ya Allāh, this is the example. And You, in giving us this example, set our tongue's limit. Forgive me, ya Allah, for every curse I have spoken. The damns muttered in traffic. The cursings whispered after a family argument. The angry words I sent to a colleague's name in my head. The laʿn of public figures I disagreed with. Each was a small expulsion of Your mercy from my mouth, and each, by Your hadith, may have boomeranged onto me when the target did not deserve it. Strip my tongue of the laʿn-habit. Replace it with the Prophet's ﷺ substitute: 'Allāhumma ihdihim.' O Allah, guide them. And when guidance feels too generous (the laʿn boils), let me at least say 'Allāhumma kfīhim sharrahum.' O Allah, suffice us from their evil. Both are duʿā. Neither is laʿn. And ya Rabb, on the Day, the Prophet ﷺ said the cursers will not be intercessors or witnesses. Do not let me lose those rights. Make me a believer whose tongue earns shafāʿah by being merciful in this dunyā. Āmīn ya Raḥīm.
Sources: Quran, Sahih Bukhari, Sahih Muslim, Abu Dawud, Tirmidhi, Ibn al-Qayyim, Ghazali. The Qur'an and its translation are verified; the scholarship is retold faithfully in our own words and credited to its sources, never reproduced verbatim.
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