Fofoca online: é haram?

Islam's backbiting text is among the most vivid in scripture. Quran 49:12 asks the backbiter whether he would 'like to eat the flesh of his dead brother' — then adds 'you would detest it,' making the natural revulsion the measure of the act. The definition is broad: mentioning anything your brother would dislike, even if true, in his absence; falsehood on top of it is buhtan, slander, and worse. The Prophet described the gossiper's punishment in imagery that ensured the community remembered it, and Surah 104 opens with 'woe to every humazah lumazah' — the slanderer-scandalmonger — as a named category of the doomed. Online, fiqh councils note the aggravating factors: the audience is unlimited, the record is permanent, and anonymity removes the natural shame that restrained the market-place gossip. The Islamic rehabilitation program is also practical: cover others' faults ('whoever covers a believer, Allah will cover him on the Day of Resurrection'), speak good or stay silent — the Prophet's famous summary rule — and leave the thread. Muslim ethicists add the upside: the same networks that spread faults can spread honor, and defending the absent is Islamic chivalry (muru'ah).