Digital Privacy: Does Suspicion Justify Digital Spying?

Late at night, when the household has fallen asleep, a trembling hand reaches for a phone resting on a bedside table. It is unlocked cautiously, almost like a thief breaking in, as its messages, photos, and call history are searched. The heart races between two fears: finding what it dreads and being discovered by its owner.

In another home, a father secretly installs an app to track his adult son, monitoring his whereabouts, reading his messages, and checking whom he speaks to. Meanwhile, in a third setting, a manager scrolls through employees' private conversations, claiming to be protecting the company's interests.

Such scenes have become increasingly common, to the point that people have almost grown accustomed to their ugliness. In our time, a smartphone has become a second home, perhaps even a more private one. It holds a person's secrets, fears, vulnerabilities, and conversations shared only because they were believed to remain between the people involved.

This raises a question many people ask, whether openly or implicitly: If I have reason to suspect someone, am I not entitled to put my doubts to rest by finding out the truth?

A Chain That Begins with Suspicion

The Quran offers a remarkably precise diagnosis of this moral failing in a single verse: {O believers! Avoid many suspicions, ˹for˺ indeed, some suspicions are sinful. And do not spy, nor backbite one another. Would any of you like to eat the flesh of their dead brother? You would despise that! And fear Allah. Surely Allah is ˹the˺ Accepter of Repentance, Most Merciful.} [Al-Hujurat 49:12]

The sequence of prohibitions in this verse carries a profound lesson: suspicion comes first, followed by spying, then backbiting. They are not isolated sins but links in a single chain, each leading to the next.

A negative thought takes root in the heart. If a person entertains it and allows it to grow, it can turn into an imagined certainty. That false certainty then drives the person to search for evidence to support it. And once something is found, or merely mistaken for evidence, the tongue is set loose against another person's honour.

Spying, therefore, grows out of suspicion and paves the way for backbiting. Whoever wishes to escape the end of this chain must break it at its beginning.

The Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) warned against the deceptive nature of suspicion, saying: “Beware of suspicion, for suspicion is the worst of false tales. And do not look for the others' faults, and do not spy on one another.” ⁽¹⁾

Describing suspicion as “the worst of false tales” is particularly striking. A person consumed by suspicion may not be lying to someone else; rather, they are deceiving themselves. They construct an entire story from a passing glance, interpret a delayed reply as betrayal, or turn an unfamiliar phone number into evidence of an illicit relationship. Eventually, they begin to believe their own assumptions as though they had witnessed them firsthand.

A Smartphone Is a Private Space. Looking Through It Is an Intrusion.

Islam grants homes a sanctity that no one may violate without permission. The Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) explained the wisdom behind this requirement when he saw a man peering through a hole into his private quarters. He said: “Verily! The order of taking permission to enter has been enjoined because of that sight.” ⁽²⁾

Seeking permission, therefore, is not merely a matter of etiquette. It safeguards what people do not wish others to see.

If the underlying principle is protecting people from unwanted observation, it also applies to the digital spaces they consider private. A locked smartphone is like a closed door to its owner's personal life. Secretly unlocking it is no different in principle from peering through a hole in someone's door, even if the means have changed and the setting is now digital.

Indeed, looking through someone's phone may reveal far more than looking into their home. A home offers glimpses of a person's outward life, while a smartphone can expose the most intimate details of their inner world.

When Is It Permissible to Investigate?

Classical Muslim scholars did not overlook this issue. They examined it carefully, establishing principles that remain relevant to our time.

Imam Al-Mawardi distinguished between two categories of suspected wrongdoing that may be concealed from public view.

The first involves a serious violation whose consequences cannot be reversed once it occurs. For example, a trustworthy person informs someone that another individual is alone with a woman intending to commit adultery, or with a man intending to murder him. In such circumstances, investigating the matter and uncovering what is happening may be permissible.

The second category includes matters that fall short of this level of seriousness. In such cases, spying and lifting the veil from people's private affairs are not permissible. ⁽³⁾

Consider the conditions underlying this distinction:

• Reliable information: The concern must be based on information from a trustworthy source, not personal anxiety or unfounded suspicion.
• A grave offence: The suspected wrongdoing must involve serious harm, not a passing doubt or ambiguous behaviour.
• Irreversible consequences: The danger must be one that cannot be remedied if it is allowed to occur.

When these conditions are met, investigating may be justified to prevent a greater harm. If even one is absent, the original prohibition remains in force: Do not spy.

How far removed is this standard from the conduct of a spouse who becomes uneasy because their partner spends more time looking at a phone, or a husband who grows suspicious after hearing his wife laugh during a phone conversation?

Such anxieties call for honest communication and dialogue, not secret surveillance and intrusion.

Al-Mawardi also recounts, in the same discussion, an incident involving Umar ibn Al-Khattab (may Allah be pleased with him). Umar once entered a gathering where people were drinking. When he rebuked them, they responded that he had violated Allah's prohibition against spying and the requirement to seek permission before entering.

Umar replied, “These two are for those two,” and left. ⁽⁴⁾

Whatever the status of this report, Al-Mawardi cites it to illustrate an important principle: committing the sin of spying does not become permissible simply because the person being investigated may also be committing a wrongdoing.

What Spying Destroys

A person who spies may believe they are protecting their marriage, family, or workplace. In reality, they may be destroying one of the most valuable foundations of all these relationships: trust.

The Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) warned: “If you search for the faults of the people, you will corrupt them.” ⁽⁵⁾

This warning is particularly relevant to married life.

A husband who discovers that his wife has searched through his phone may never look at her in quite the same way again. A wife who learns that she is being monitored may lose the sense of security that gives a home its emotional foundation.

If the person spying finds nothing, they have sacrificed someone's trust without gaining certainty. Suspicion is rarely satisfied; it simply demands another search, another inspection, and another explanation.

And if they do find something, they have reached it through a prohibited means, undermining their own moral position and potentially closing the door to a conversation that could have led to understanding and reconciliation.

The Difference Between Responsible Oversight and Spying

This does not mean that every form of monitoring is prohibited. There is an important distinction between legitimate oversight and blameworthy spying, and it must be understood.

A father who monitors the content reaching his young child, openly and with the child's knowledge, is fulfilling his responsibility of care and protection. He is not engaging in prohibited spying.

Likewise, an organisation that monitors its work devices under a clearly communicated policy, known to its employees, is exercising legitimate oversight.

Spying, however, occurs when surveillance is carried out secretly against an adult who is independently responsible for their own affairs, invading matters that belong to their private life, without sufficient evidence and merely out of suspicion.

The distinction rests on three principles: genuine responsibility rather than domination, transparency rather than secrecy, and a legitimate need measured according to its actual scope rather than insatiable curiosity.

Privacy and the Divine Virtue of Concealment

When Islam prohibits spying, it is not shielding wrongdoers from accountability. Rather, it is protecting society from becoming a network of watching eyes and listening ears, where trust dies and every individual lives as though they were a suspect awaiting conviction.

A society in which people preserve one another's privacy is not a society that turns a blind eye to wrongdoing. It is a society that recognises human weakness, understands that the door to repentance remains open, and appreciates the mercy of allowing those who have erred a way back without public humiliation.

Perhaps the most fitting conclusion is this: Allah, who knows what lies hidden in every heart, conceals the faults of His servants, grants them time, and accepts their repentance.

Why, then, should a weak servant appoint themselves as a relentless investigator of what Allah has concealed?

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