and the adherents of the Sufi orders, a trial that has afflicted the greater part of the Muslim community.
The manifestations of innovation and polytheistic practices that the author condemned in this regard are as relevant to our age as ever, even if some outward forms have changed with the passage of time.
The author also examined another matter that we can now see spreading and gaining ground throughout the Muslim world, namely: the attention devoted to historical relics—turning them into shrines, visiting them, showcasing them, and protecting them. Indeed, this has become one of the chief concerns of ministries of tourism and departments of antiquities.
Whether these relics are
• those linked to the prophets and the righteous—such as the Cave of Ḥirāʾ, the Cave of Thawr, the places where the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him and his family, prayed, the site of the tree beneath which the Pledge of Riḍwān was given, and the like;
• the remains of bygone nations and peoples—such as the monuments of the Pharaohs, the Assyrians, the Canaanites, the pre-Islamic Arabs, and others; or
• relics left by Muslims themselves,
to venerate them and accord them special care is impermissible in Islam. Such conduct is either outright polytheism or a gateway leading to it, for this kind of attention is the seed and foundation of sanctification and the first spark of temptation. Islam has therefore cut off this avenue completely.
In the same category falls what some people today call “protecting and preserving antiquities.” This is the germ of polytheism, and Muslims—especially in Saudi Arabia, where, praise be to Allah, such practices do not exist—must beware of this notion with the utmost vigilance and uproot it before it becomes entrenched. Its head has already begun to rise, and if the custodian grows heedless, the feared calamity may come to pass.
What I have stated does not contradict Allah’s command to travel through the land, observe His creation, and take heed from the fates of earlier nations. Being instructed to look and reflect does not entail preserving and venerating the relics of those who preceded us. One indication of this is that we have been forbidden to remain in the dwellings of