"Insults are the business of the court"

Insults, as referenced in the words of Naguib Mahfouz, are stripped of their raw emotion and volatility when processed within the confines of a formal legal or social institution. In everyday life, an insult can wound, enrage, or provoke retaliation. Yet, when grievances arrive at the court, insults are translated into language fit for legal consideration: evidence, testimony, argumentation. The courtroom becomes a crucible in which the heat of offense is reduced to procedural ash, and the personal pain of an insult is transformed into a public matter subject to adjudication.

The court, in this sense, is a stage where grievances are aired, processed, and resolved through codified rules rather than personal vendetta or immediate retribution. It exists not to protect sensibilities, but to arbitrate disputes and maintain social order. The phrase acknowledges that insults, words and actions that might fester into violence or endless cycles of revenge, are absorbed by the apparatus of justice, turning emotional wounds into matters of law. Once within the court's jurisdiction, insults lose much of their ability to escalate further; instead, they become issues for calm consideration, argument, and verdict.

Such a transformation is crucial for the functioning of a civilized society. By making the court the "business" of insults, conflict is channeled away from destructive paths and toward rational debate. There is an implicit recognition here that human interactions are inevitably fraught with misunderstandings, slights, and injury. The court, therefore, is not simply a venue for property disputes or crime, but an essential forum for mediating the inevitable frictions of human dignity and pride.

Mahfouz’s observation reflects on the human need for structured mechanisms to handle offense. The act of bringing insults before the court reflects a turning away from chaos toward order, from passion toward reason, highlighting both the limitations and the possibilities inherent in the legal system’s role as arbiter of social conflict.