In the Musnad and in Abū Ḥātim’s Ṣaḥīḥ it is related from Ibn Masʿūd—may Allah be pleased with him—that the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said:

“Among the worst of people are those upon whom the Final Hour will arrive while they are still alive, and those who turn graves into places of worship.”

Reports conveying this meaning are mass-transmitted from him—may my father and mother be ransomed for him—and likewise from his Companions.

What he forbade—turning graves into places of worship—is wholly separate from what he commanded and legislated: greeting the dead and praying for them. The sanctioned visitation falls under the latter category, whereas the innovated visitation belongs to the former. His prohibition of taking graves as places of worship includes a ban on building mosques over them and on deliberately praying beside them; both are forbidden by consensus of the scholars. Indeed, they have explicitly declared the construction of mosques upon graves to be unlawful, as the textual evidence makes clear.

The scholars also concur that it is not legislated to set out with the intention of praying or supplicating at graves. None of the leading imams ever claimed that prayer or supplication there is superior to doing so in mosques free of graves. On the contrary, the scholars of Islam unanimously agree that praying and supplicating in mosques not built over graves is superior to doing so in those constructed upon them; in fact, prayer and supplication in such places are prohibited and disliked by unanimous agreement, and they have