Assalamu Alaykum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuhu
Last week I spoke about the importance of removing Laghw (ill speech) and Kiddab (lies) from our day-to-day conversations. You can read about it here.
Today I want to continue along the same theme and share a little story with you about the Triple-Filter Test:
During the golden Abbasid period, one of the scholars in Baghdad, the capital of the Muslim caliphate at that time, was reputed to hold knowledge in high esteem.
One day an acquaintance met the great scholar and said, “Do you know what I just heard about your friend?
“Hold on a minute, before telling me anything I’d like you to pass a little test. It’s called the Triple Filter Test.”
The Man: “Triple Filter Test?”
Scholar: “That’s right, before you talk to me about my friend it might be a good idea to take a moment and filter what you’re going to say.”
Scholar continued… “That’s why I call it the triple filter test. The first filter is Truth. Have you made absolutely sure that what you are about to tell me is true?”
The Man: “No, actually I just heard about it and…”
Scholar: “All right, so you don’t really know if it’s true or not. Now let’s try the second filter, the filter of Goodness. Is what you are about to tell me about my friend something good?”
The Man: “No, on the contrary…”
Scholar: “So, you want to tell me something bad about him, but you’re not certain it’s true. You may still pass the test though, because there’s one filter left.”
Scholar continued: “The filter of Usefulness. Is what you want to tell me about my friend going to be useful to me?”
The Man: “No, not really.”
Scholar: “Well, if what you want to tell me is neither true nor good nor even useful, why tell it to me at all?”
So the moral of the story is to basically watch your tongue 🙂
Ask yourself these questions whenever you’re on the verge of blabbing something:
Is what I’m about to say TRUE?
Is what I’m about to say something GOOD?
Is what I’m about to say something USEFUL?
Until next week!
