Idle speech (laghw), fiqh rulings

Laghw, in lexicon, has many senses: a fall, what counts for nothing in speech or otherwise, what the heart does not bind itself to, as in saying no by God or yes by God; Aisha said idle speech is only in dispute, jest and banter in a talk the heart does not bind to; it also means sin, uproar, and utterance. In law it is speech that carries no weight for the ruling; idle is more general than void ¹.

Most jurists hold that an idle oath carries no expiation and no sin, on the verse of the surah of the Table (verse 89) cited without quoting, which denies blame for the idle ². Ahmad and al-Nakha'i held that one who swears of something he believes so, and it proves otherwise, owes expiation since it is not idle ². The idle oath may concern the past, the present or the future: swearing on what one believes which proves otherwise, or words that run on the tongue without the heart binding to them ^{2 3}. The Hanafis, al-Adawi and Ibn Arafa of the Malikis deny that a future oath is idle, since a future oath binds whether intended or not ³.

The jurists differ on listening to the sermon and the idle speech of one who does not listen, in the detailed entry on listening ³. The Malikis hold that the sermon must be in Arabic, so in another tongue it is idle, that it must be audible, and that it must have substance ³.

The Sheikh holds that one of the Devil's steps is to lead a person toward the forbidden little by little, and he gives the example of asking someone who has bought something whether he paid the full price; he counts this intrusive question as idle talk (laghw) ⁴.

He likewise counts as laghw questions such as whether a car was bought in cash or on instalments, and from which bank, an Islamic one or an ordinary one, and says the person asked may answer with something just to quiet the questioner ⁵.

He cites the example of an employee asked about his salary, a question put to twenty employees, whose answer may be forgotten after two months, and then asks whether this belongs to God's religion; he advises people not to get themselves into such troubles (needs_source) ⁶.

He says that in the 1950s and 1960s idle talk and backbiting were attributed to women, whereas today he sees men outdoing them, sitting in cafes every day and talking about the reform of the Ummah and the interpretation of Sahih al-Bukhari in talk that serves no purpose (needs_source) ⁷.