Venerating a place that the Sacred Law has not venerated is even more blameworthy than venerating a time it has not venerated; for exalting tangible objects by performing acts of worship at them is closer to idol-worship than exalting particular times. Accordingly, one ought to avoid praying in such locations (1) even when the person praying has no intention of honoring them, lest that become a pretext for singling them out for prayer—just as it is forbidden to pray beside verified graves, even when the prayer is not intended for their sake. The same principle applies to singling out Friday or the middle days of Shaʿbān for fasting: although the faster may harbor no special intention, whenever the Law forbids singling something out, the very act of doing so is likewise forbidden.
How closely these places resemble the Mosque of Dhirār (2), “founded on the brink of a crumbling precipice, so it collapsed with its builders into the Fire of Hell.” Because that mosque was erected to cause harm and foster unbelief, to divide the believers, and as a base for those who had previously fought Allah and His Messenger, Allah forbade His Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—to pray in it, and commanded that it be demolished.
These illegitimate shrines have been set up only to rival the Houses of Allah, to magnify what Allah has not magnified, to devote oneself to things that can neither benefit nor harm, and to divert people from the path of Allah—that path being to worship Him alone, without partner, in the manner He legislated through His Messenger, peace and blessings be upon him. Turning them into an ‘Eid consists of gathering at them and habitually setting out for them, for the very word ‘Eid is derived from “return” and “recurrence.”
Associated with this category—though not identical to it—are places to which doubtful merits are ascribed: the many graves said to be the tomb of a prophet, the grave of a righteous man, or the station of a prophet or a righteous man, and the like. Some of these claims may be true, many are false; indeed, the vast majority of shrines on the face of the earth fall into this class, for genuinely authenticated graves and stations are exceedingly few.
More than one scholar used to say, “Nothing is established….”