Nawawi Hadith 29: The Tongue's Harvest

Part One: The Question That Opened Paradise

Brothers,

Today’s khutbah is based on the 29th hadith in Imam Nawawi’s 40 Hadith:

On the authority of Mu'adh ibn Jabal (may Allah be pleased with him) who said: I said, 'O Messenger of Allah, tell me of an act which will take me into Paradise and keep me away from the Fire.' He said, 'You have asked me about a mighty matter, yet it is easy for the one for whom Allah makes it easy. Worship Allah and do not associate anything with Him, establish prayer, pay zakah, fast Ramadan, and perform pilgrimage to the House.' Then he said, 'Shall I not guide you to the gates of goodness? Fasting is a shield, and charity extinguishes sin as water extinguishes fire, and a man's prayer in the depths of the night.' Then he recited: 'Their sides forsake their beds...' until he reached '...as reward for what they used to do.' Then he said, 'Shall I not tell you of the peak of the matter, its pillar, and its topmost part?' I said, 'Yes, O Messenger of Allah.' He said, 'The peak of the matter is Islam, its pillar is the prayer, and its topmost part is jihad.' Then he said, 'Shall I not tell you of the mastery of all that?' I said, 'Yes, O Messenger of Allah.' He took hold of his tongue and said, 'Restrain this.' I said, 'O Prophet of Allah, will we be held accountable for what we say?' He said, 'May your mother be bereft of you, Mu'adh! Is there anything that topples people on their faces into the Fire other than the harvests of their tongues?' (Tirmidhi (hasan sahih))

Mu’adh ibn Jabal asked one of the most direct questions a believer can ask: what single act guarantees me Paradise and saves me from the Fire? The Prophet ﷺ did not give him one act. He gave him a ladder, rising higher with each step, until the final rung was the smallest organ in the body and the one most people never take seriously.

Part 1: A Mighty Matter Made Easy

The Prophet ﷺ opened by calling this a mighty matter, but one Allah makes easy for whoever He wills. Then he named the foundations: tawhid, salah, zakah, sawm, hajj.

And He has not placed upon you in the religion any difficulty. (Al-Hajj, 22:78)

These five are not burdens designed to exhaust you. They are the structure Allah built so that entering Paradise would be within reach of every sincere believer, rich or poor, free or imprisoned, healthy or sick, adjusted according to ability but never removed from the heart’s intention.

Part 2: Fasting as a Shield

Then came the gates of goodness, starting with fasting.

O you who believe! Fasting is prescribed for you as it was prescribed for those before you, so that you may become mindful ˹of Allah˺. (Al-Baqara, 2:183)

Fasting is a shield. So the person observing fasting should avoid obscene speech, should not behave foolishly and ignorantly, and if somebody quarrels with him or abuses him, he should say, I am fasting. (Bukhari & Muslim)

A shield does not attack. It protects. Fasting shields the fasting man from his own worst impulses, and it shields him from the punishment of the Fire, if kept sincerely.

Part 3: Charity That Extinguishes Sin

Then charity, described as putting out sin the way water puts out fire.

If you disclose your charitable expenditures, they are good. But if you conceal them and give them to the poor, it is better for you, and He will remove from you some of your misdeeds. And Allah is well acquainted with what you do. (Al-Baqara, 2:271)

Sin burns. Left unchecked, it spreads and consumes good deeds the way fire consumes dry wood. Charity is one of the tools Allah gave us specifically to douse that fire before it does lasting damage.

Part 4: The Deep of the Night

Then prayer in the depths of the night, and the Prophet ﷺ recited the very verses describing those who make it:

Their sides forsake their beds, invoking their Lord in fear and aspiration, and from what We have provided them, they spend. And no soul knows what has been hidden for them of comfort for eyes as reward for what they used to do. (As-Sajda, 32:16-17)

No one else sees this deed. There is no congregation, no witness, only a man and his Lord in the dark hours when everyone else is asleep. Allah rewards it with a comfort so hidden that not even the angels are told its full description.

Part 5: Peak, Pillar, and Topmost Part

Then the Prophet ﷺ named the structure of the whole matter: Islam is the peak, prayer is its pillar, and jihad, struggle in the path of Allah, is its topmost point, the highest station a believer can reach.

Those who believed, emigrated, and strove in the cause of Allah with their wealth and lives are greater in rank in the sight of Allah, and it is those who are the attainers ˹of success˺. (At-Tawba, 9:20)

Jihad here is broader than combat. It is the struggle to remain obedient when disobedience is easier, the struggle to speak truth when silence is safer, the struggle against the nafs itself, which the Prophet ﷺ called the greater jihad.

Part Two: The One Thing That Undoes All of It

Brothers,

After naming five obligations, three gates of goodness, and the peak, pillar, and summit of the entire religion, the Prophet ﷺ then asked Mu’adh one more question: shall I not tell you what controls all of this? And instead of naming another great deed, he reached out, took hold of his own tongue, and said, restrain this.

Part 6: The Smallest Organ, the Largest Danger

Mu’adh was so surprised that a small muscle in the mouth could undo all the good deeds just described that he asked directly: will we really be held accountable for what we say?

Man does not utter any word except that with him is an observer prepared ˹to record˺. (Qaaf, 50:18)

Every word is written. Not only the sins of the hand and the sins of the body, but the sins of speech: lies, backbiting, slander, cursing, mockery, false witness, insults that wound and never heal.

The Prophet ﷺ’s answer to Mu’adh remains one of the most sobering statements in all of hadith literature: is there anything that topples people on their faces into the Fire other than the harvests of their tongues?

Not their theft. Not their violence, though that is grave. Their tongues. The words they planted, and reaped.

A servant may utter a word without thinking whether it is right or wrong, and because of this he will fall down into the Fire a distance further than what is between the east and the west. (Bukhari & Muslim)

Whoever guarantees me what is between his jaws and what is between his legs, I guarantee him Paradise. (Tirmidhi (hasan))

Part 7: The Prison Context, Where Words Cost the Most

Brothers, nowhere is this hadith more relevant than here. In this environment, words start fights that hands finish. A single sentence, a disrespectful comment, a rumor spread about a man’s business, an insult about his family, can escalate in seconds into something that adds years to a sentence or ends a life.

You have already been through more consequences from words, yours or others’, than most men outside these walls will ever face. This hadith is telling you directly: the deed most likely to undo you, after everything else you build through prayer, fasting, and charity, is what leaves your mouth in a moment of anger or carelessness.

Restraining the tongue here does not mean weakness. It means recognizing, as the Prophet ﷺ taught Mu’adh, that the tongue is the final and hardest gate to master, harder than fasting, harder than night prayer, because it moves faster than your intention can catch it.

Part 8: Building the Habit of Restraint

Before you speak in anger, pause long enough for the first wave to pass. If a word will humiliate, provoke, or wound without necessity, leave it unsaid, even if it is true, even if you are right. Fill the silence you create with dhikr instead of resentment. And when you do speak, aim for words that heal a situation rather than words that win an argument.

Whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day should speak a good word or remain silent. (Bukhari & Muslim)

This single line, brothers, is worth more protection in this place than almost anything else you can practice.

Part 9: What Silence Actually Costs You

Some men resist this teaching because they believe restraint means swallowing every insult, accepting every disrespect, never standing up for themselves. That is not what the Prophet ﷺ taught. He himself spoke firmly against injustice and corrected wrong when it needed correcting. What he forbade was the careless word, the word spoken without weighing its cost first.

And tell My servants to say that which is best. Indeed, Satan induces discord among them. Indeed Satan is ever, to mankind, a clear enemy. (Al-Israa, 17:53)

Notice the order in this ayah: say what is best, because the alternative opens a door for Shaytan to turn a small disagreement into lasting enmity. Silence, when speaking would only inflame a situation, is not weakness. It is the very discipline the Prophet ﷺ described as the mastery of everything else you have built.

He is not strong who overcomes people by his strength, but he who controls himself while in anger. (Bukhari)

The strongest man in a tense unit is rarely the loudest one. He is the one who could have said something devastating and chose silence instead, or who could have escalated and chose to walk away. That restraint, repeated daily, is what the Prophet ﷺ was pointing to when he took hold of his own tongue in front of Mu’adh.

May Allah grant us the gates He showed Mu’adh, and may He grant us mastery over the last and hardest gate of all.

O Allah, make the road to Paradise easy for us as it was made easy for those You love.

O Allah, let fasting be a shield between us and every sin.

O Allah, let our charity extinguish what our sins have set alight.

O Allah, wake us in the depths of the night to call upon You when others sleep.

O Allah, raise our rank through sincere struggle against our own souls.

O Allah, restrain our tongues from every word that would topple us into the Fire.

O Allah, let us speak only what is good, and grant us the strength to be silent when silence is better.

O Allah, forgive the words we have already spoken and cannot take back.