God hath commanded His servants to speak well, e.g. to acknowledge His lordship and to praise Him and to call mankind to His court. Speech is a great blessing conferred on Man by God, and thereby is Man distinguished from all other things. Some interpreters of the text, “_We have honoured the sons of Adam_” (Kor. xvii, 72), explain it as meaning “by the gift of speech”. Nevertheless, in speech there are also great evils, for the Apostle said: “The worst that I fear for my people is the tongue.” In short, speech is like wine: it intoxicates the mind, and those who begin to have a taste for it cannot abstain from it. Accordingly, the Ṣúfís, knowing that speech is harmful, never spoke except when it was necessary, i.e. they considered the beginning and end of their discourse; if the whole was for God’s sake, they spoke; otherwise they kept silence, because they firmly believed that God knows our secret thoughts (cf. Kor. xliii, 80). The Apostle said: “He who keeps silence is saved.” In silence there are many advantages and spiritual favours (_futúḥ_), and in speech there are many evils. Some Shaykhs have preferred silence to speech, while others have set speech above silence. Among the former is Junayd, who said: “Expressions are wholly pretensions, and where realities are established pretensions are idle.” Sometimes it is excusable not to speak although one has the will to do so, i.e. fear becomes an excuse for not speaking in spite of one’s having the will and the power to speak; and refusal to speak of God does not impair the essence of gnosis. But at no time is a man excused for mere pretension devoid of reality, which is the principle of hypocrites. Pretension without reality is hypocrisy, and reality without pretension is sincerity, because “he who is grounded in eloquence needs no tongue to communicate with his Lord”. Expressions only serve to inform another than God, for God Himself requires no explanation of our circumstances, and others than God are not worth so much that we should occupy ourselves with them. This is corroborated by the saying of Junayd, “He who knows God is dumb,” for in actual vision (_`iyán_) exposition (_bayán_) is a veil. It is related that Shiblí rose up in Junayd’s meeting-place and cried aloud, “O my object of desire!” and pointed to God. Junayd said: “O Abú Bakr, if God is the object of your desire, why do you point to Him, who is independent of this? And if the object of your desire is another, God knows what you say: why do you speak falsely?” Shiblí asked God to pardon him for having uttered those words.