Nor did He say, “and the shrines belong to Allah.”
The same principle is confirmed by the established Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. In the sound ḥadīth he said:
“Whoever builds a mosque for the sake of Allah, Allah will build for him a house in Paradise.”
He did not say, “whoever builds a shrine.”
He also said:
“A man’s prayer in the mosque surpasses his prayer in his home or in his marketplace by twenty-five degrees.”
And in another authentic ḥadīth he declared:
“Whoever performs ablution in his house and perfects it, then sets out for the mosque driven by nothing but the prayer, each step he takes raises him one degree and erases one sin. When he sits awaiting the prayer, he is counted as being in prayer so long as he is waiting, and the angels keep praying for him while he remains in the place where he prayed, saying, ‘O Allah, forgive him; O Allah, have mercy on him,’ so long as he does not break his state of purification.”
(1) Reported by al-Bukhari, Sahih, Book of the Prayer, “Chapter: Whoever builds a mosque,” no. 450 (Fath al-Bari, 1:544), on the authority of Uthman b. Affan: “I heard the Prophet say, ‘Whoever builds a mosque—Bukayr (the sub-narrator) said: I think he added—seeking the Face of Allah, Allah will build for him its like in Paradise.’” Also in Muslim, Sahih, Book of Mosques, “Chapter: The virtue of building mosques,” no. 533 (1:378), with the same wording and another version: “Whoever builds a mosque for Allah, Allah will build for him its like in Paradise.” Al-Baghawi records it in Sharh al-Sunna, Book of Purification, “Chapter: The reward for building a mosque,” supplementary no. 461 (2:347).
(2) Reported by Muslim, Sahih, Book of Mosques, “Chapter: The merit of congregational prayer,” no. 649 (1:449–50, 459), and by al-Bukhari, Sahih, Book of Adhan, “Chapter: The merit of congregational prayer,” no. 647 (Fath al-Bari, 2:131). Their wordings differ slightly from the version cited by the author.
(3) la tanhazhu: al-Nawawi explains in his commentary on Muslim that it means “do not make him rise and stand,” which corresponds to the following phrase, “he seeks nothing but the prayer” (5:66).
(4) Reported by al-Bukhari, Sahih, Book of Adhan, “Chapter: The merit of congregational prayer,” no. 647 (Fath al-Bari, 2:131), with minor wording differences from the author’s citation; also by Muslim, Sahih, Book of Mosques, “Chapter: The merit of congregational prayer and waiting for it,” no. 649 (1:459), whose wording is closer to that used by the author.