How, then, about matters that are even graver, in which a person resembles the idolaters—or sinks into idolatry itself?

Whoever travels to a particular spot in the hope of gaining blessing simply by visiting it, when the Sacred Law has prescribed no such thing, is committing a reprehensible act—some forms of which are more serious than others. It makes no difference whether the spot is a tree, a spring, a flowing canal, a mountain, or a cave; and it is the same whether he goes there to pray, to supplicate, to recite Qur’an, to remember Allah, or to perform any other devotional practice. In every one of these cases he is reserving for that place a specific act of worship that the Law has not designated for it, neither in its particularity nor in its kind.

More blameworthy still is for someone to vow oil to be burned there as a lamp and to claim—as some misguided people do—that the place “accepts vows.” Such a vow, by unanimous agreement of the scholars, is a sinful vow; it is impermissible to fulfill it. Rather, according to many scholars—including the well-known position of Imam Ahmad—one must offer expiation for it. Another report from him, which is also the view of Abū Ḥanīfah, al-Shāfiʿī, and others, is that the person simply seeks Allah’s forgiveness for making the vow and nothing further is required. The issue is well known.

The same ruling applies if someone vows food—bread or anything else—to the fish that live in that pool or well, or if he vows money, in cash or otherwise, to the custodians or the self-styled devotees who remain at that site. Those custodians have more than a passing resemblance to the attendants who served the pre-Islamic shrines