Section: Seclusion at graves, residing near them, and serving as their custodians

Among the acts that are categorically forbidden are: remaining in devotional seclusion at a grave, lodging beside it, acting as its caretaker, and hanging drapes over it as though it were the House of Allah, the Kaʿbah.

We have already shown that erecting a mosque on a grave is, by unanimous agreement of the ummah, prohibited and forbidden by the Sunnah itself. How much more blameworthy, then, is it when people also take up residence in such a mosque and practise seclusion there as though it were the Sacred Mosque? Some even prefer that seclusion to seclusion in the Sacred Mosque, for—as the Qur’an says—“Among mankind are those who take equals besides Allah, loving them as they should love Allah; but those who believe are firmer in their love for Allah” (2:165).

In the eyes of the tomb-devotees, the sanctity of that mosque built over a grave—one that Allah and His Messenger have declared unlawful—outweighs the sanctity of the Houses of Allah which He has allowed to be raised and in which His Name is remembered, “houses founded upon piety from Allah and His good pleasure” (9:108).

Through these innovations Satan has driven many people into grave polytheism, to the extent that some of them hold that visiting the shrines erected over graves—whether the grave of a prophet