Fast facts
- The six
- Greeting, visiting the sick, following the funeral, answering an invitation, responding to a sneeze, wishing well
- Reported in
- Sahih Muslim 2162
- The three prohibitions
- Suspicion, spying, backbiting: Sūrah al-Ḥujurāt 49:12
- The standing rule
- Believers are brothers; make peace between them (49:10)
- Neighbours
- Owed their rights whatever their religion
On this page
The six duties
Asked what one Muslim owes another, the Prophet ﷺ (محمد) gave a list. What is striking about it is how small each item is.
- Greet him when you meet him.
- Accept his invitation when he invites you.
- Give him sincere counsel when he seeks your advice.
- Respond when he sneezes and praises Allah.
- Visit him when he is ill.
- Follow his funeral when he dies.
No item on that list requires wealth, learning or authority. They are the ordinary courtesies of presence, and they are named as rights, حقوق, rather than as kindnesses. A right is something the other party may expect (Sahih Muslim 2162).
The list also covers the shape of a life: meeting, hospitality, counsel, small daily exchange, illness, death. It is a description of accompanying someone through the whole of it.
The three things that dissolve a community
Against those duties the Qur’an sets three prohibitions, and it puts all three in one verse because they operate as a sequence.
يَا أَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا اجْتَنِبُوا كَثِيرًا مِّنَ الظَّنِّ إِنَّ بَعْضَ الظَّنِّ إِثْمٌ ۖ وَلَا تَجَسَّسُوا وَلَا يَغْتَب بَّعْضُكُم بَعْضًا"O you who believe, avoid much suspicion; indeed some suspicion is sin. And do not spy, and do not backbite one another." (Sūrah al-Ḥujurāt 49:12)
Suspicion first, because it comes first. Then spying, because suspicion looks for confirmation. Then backbiting, because what is found gets repeated. The verse then supplies the image that gives the sin its weight: would one of you like to eat the flesh of his dead brother?
The Prophet ﷺ defined backbiting narrowly enough that the usual defence fails: it is mentioning your brother with what he dislikes. Told that this might be true, he answered that if it is untrue it is slander, which is worse. Accuracy is not the exemption people assume it is.
The duty to repair
The verse two places earlier establishes the relationship and then assigns work: the believers are but brothers, so make peace between your brothers (Sūrah al-Ḥujurāt 49:10). The obligation falls on bystanders, not only on the parties to the quarrel.
The hadith literature sets an outer limit on estrangement: it is not lawful for a Muslim to shun his brother beyond three days, and the better of the two is the one who greets first. That is a short window, and it is deliberately shorter than most grudges.
The neighbour, of any religion
Neighbourly right in the sources is not conditioned on shared belief. Sūrah al-Nisāʾ 4:36 commands good treatment of the near neighbour and the distant neighbour without qualification, alongside parents, relatives, orphans and travellers.
The reported emphasis is unusually strong: that Jibril (جبريل) (عليه السلام) kept urging the Prophet ﷺ about the neighbour until he thought the neighbour would be made an heir. And the warning is blunt, that a man whose neighbour is not safe from his harm does not believe, said three times (Sahih al-Bukhari 6016).
Frequently asked questions
Is backbiting ever permitted?
The classical jurists list narrow exceptions where there is a genuine need: seeking a legal remedy against a wrong, warning someone entering a marriage or business dealing, seeking a religious ruling, and identifying a person who cannot be identified otherwise. The common feature is a real need and no wider circulation than that need requires.
Do these rights apply to Muslims one disagrees with?
The hadith says "a Muslim", without a qualifying clause about agreement. The prohibitions on suspicion and backbiting are, if anything, most needed exactly where disagreement is sharpest, which is where they are most often abandoned.
What about non-Muslims?
The rights of neighbours, of parents, of the traveller and of anyone with whom one deals honestly are not limited by religion, and Sūrah al-Mumtaḥanah 60:8 states that Allah does not forbid kindness and justice towards those who have not fought you or driven you out.