Concerning these idolaters, the Friend (Abraham), peace be upon him, declared:

“Have you considered what you have been worshipping—
you and your earliest forefathers?
They are all enemies to me, except the Lord of all worlds.”
(Sūrat al-Shuʿarāʾ, 26:75–77)

He also said:

“I repudiate whatever you worship
except Him who created me, for He will surely guide me.”
(Sūrat al-Zukhruf, 43:26–27)

The Friend, may Allah’s blessings be upon him, denounced both their worship of the celestial bodies above and their worship of idols—figures and talismans fashioned to represent those planets, or likenesses of deceased prophets, righteous people, and others. He smashed the idols, as the Exalted says about him:

“So he reduced them to fragments, all but the largest of them, so that they might return to it.”
(Sūrat al-Anbiyāʾ, 21:58)

The point here is that polytheism has occurred repeatedly—and so too has the polytheism connected to the inhabitants of graves, such as invoking them, imploring them, or turning one’s hopes toward them.

If the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, forbade performing prayers—whose supplications are directed solely to Allah—at graves, lest that lead to any form of associating partners with their Lord, then how much more grievous is it when a real act of association occurs, such as directing one’s desires to the buried—whether by asking them to meet one’s needs, to remove