But it's only words!

One day, one of the Companions asked the Prophet (peace be upon him): "O Messenger of Allah, will we be called to account for what we say?" He replied "May you be lost to your mother! People will be thrown, faces down into the hellfire, only on account to what their tongues said!" [Tirmidhi]

Indeed the tongue controls the rest of our body. A well controlled tongue will keep us within Islam but a loose tongue will destroy us. The Prophet said: "When a person gets up in the morning, all the parts of his body make a plea to his tongue saying 'Fear Allah regarding us, because we follow you. If you are right then we shall also be right , and if you are wrong then we shall also be wrong'." [Tirmidhi]

How often do we say "It wasn't me who said it!" or that "I was only joking". We treat lies as being trivial. However we are told that Allah's messenger did not hate anything more than lying [Ahmed]. The Prophet was once asked "Can a Muslim be a coward?" He replied "Yes". He was then asked "Can a Muslim be a miser?" and the reply was "Yes". The Prophet was again asked "Can a Muslim be a liar?" The Prophet replied "No! A Muslim can never be a liar".

If we listen carefully to ourselves and to our friends speaking one day - nearly every sentence will have a swear word in it, thinking it's cool and macho to swear, copying the idols of TV and the cinema. Is it really 'cool' to swear? The Hellfire is far from being cool. People will wish they were cool then rather than being cool in this world. Remember! That every time we speak, an angel writes down what we say, and that one day we will have to answer for every single word we ever uttered. So if we swear at someone then it's written down as a sin against us. We''re only harming ourselves. The Prophet said that "abusing a Muslim is a sin and fighting with him is disbelief" [Muslim].

Instead of swearing, lying and engaging in useless talk we can use our tongues in better ways and what better than telling people about Islam.

Source:"The Tongue " - Young Muslims UK