AN OYSTER SHUTS its shell upon a crystal of moisture. A pearl results. The child of Adam, if he remembers Allah, closes his mouth around uncertain words.Then he speaks, and the jewels he utters bedazzle in both word and form.  The path to eternal bliss is thus paved by provisional guardedness, the sort that preserves the sanctity of each of our organs, spiritual and physical.

The human being attains to tranquility by deliberately reducing four of his innate qualities: Socializing, eating, sleeping, and, our topic, talking. Cutting back speech is the flintiest of the four, for it is the nature of speech to flow. Eating, sleeping, and socializing are the more fluid behaviors in their way than words, which are like rock carvings.  Once chiseled and engraved, we either present them or return them for refinement to the molten deep.

As to those we present, they take their place in one of three collections:The useless, the harmful, and the beneficial. Many of our scholars have viewed the useless and harmful in a sort of parent-child relationship, for the former tends to beget the latter.

Useless talk is most of what we utter.We need not spend many words here. It is that which is said with little thought and less purpose, often the programmed or prompted discourse of the culture.

Harmful words consist in anything that invites evil. Most talk of God and religion today falls with irony in this category, even among Muslims, for it is uttered without proper knowledge, released before proper reflection, and conjectured void of due awareness and trepidation of discussing Allah's existence.

As to worldly matters, almost all language in our time is harmful. Its form tends toward the vulgar and foul, its effect amounts to backbiting, arguing, debating, and lying, and its consequence is misguidance.  The value of such speech is in the literal negative, for it brings nothing but distraction with the trivial, dissatisfaction, and disgrace. Some use the realms of politics and sports today as an analogy.They hold that politics and sports in our culture (like our speech) are largely damaging because in most cases they serve no purpose of livelihood. Playing sports and involving oneself courageously and virtuously in the political life of people, however, yields a high value.The latter is like speaking the good word at the point of need.

Beneficial speech thus contains whatever is wholesome and constructive.This can include any transaction, worldly or spiritual, that does not inure to the detriment of specific people. Scholars debate the risks of general comment on public life, but most are of the opinion that it does not bring spiritual harm.Yet only when our lips are sealed about the ordinary does beneficial speech become illumined, for it means that when we speak we are constantly clarifying the connection between our terrestrial lives and our divine destiny. Exposing the tongue more or less only in this manner causes untoward desire to evaporate from the soul.

It is essential to keep in mind that excessive talking can be a serious threat to our souls. And that while it is true we have been given a mouth from which words flow smoothly, it is not fitting for us to forget its primacy and its privilege among the other organs of our body. But since most of us do, Muslim scholars highly recommend that we heal this excessiveness with an essential cure: Contemplation combined with Thikr or Allah's remembrance.  We have been told from our earliest days to first think and then speak. But that aptitude has almost been lost.The true beauty of life, the morality which has been transmitted to us, has been largely abandoned to ignorance and the spreading absence of concern.

And while it may not be possible for us to spend every moment of it in His remembrance, those who came before us in faith have recorded for us, their believing posterity, that being increasingly mindful of Allah cannot be achieved without contemplation.

And herein resides the virtue of silence:

It has been given to us as a means by which to attain salvation from the scorching difficulties of this world and the flaming fires of the Next.