Gone to Ruin

The Prophet (sal Allahu alaihi wa sallam) said: "When a man says, 'The people have gone to ruin,' he is the most ruined of all." [Sahih Muslim]

Imam Nawawi explains that this hadith means that a person who continually finds faults with people and mentions their failings is the most ruined of all. He becomes worse than they are because of the sin he commits in disparaging and attacking them, which may also lead to conceitedness and seeing himself as better than they. Scholars concur that the condemnation only applies to someone who says the like of this out of contempt for people, considering them inferior and himself superior, despising the way they are because of his ignorance of the divine wisdom in Allah's creating them. But if one says it out of sadness at seeing one's own religious failings and those of others, there is no harm in it.