Section: On the fact that no place is to be singled out for worship save the mosques themselves.

The bedrock principle of the Muslims’ religion is that no specific spot is deliberately sought out for acts of devotion except the mosques. The practice of the idolaters and the People of the Book—exalting sites of worship other than mosques, just as the pre-Islamic Arabs used to venerate Mount Ḥirāʾ and similar locations—is something Islam came to erase, abolish, and abrogate.

All mosques, furthermore, are equal in regard to the acts of worship performed in them: whatever may be done in one mosque may likewise be done in any other, with the single exception of the Sacred Mosque (al-Masjid al-Ḥarām). Its distinctive rites—such as circumambulation—belong to it alone, and no other place is faced in prayer.

As for the Prophet’s Mosque and al-Masjid al-Aqsa, every act of worship that the Law permits in them is equally permissible in all other mosques—prayer, supplication, remembrance of God, Qur’an recitation, and iʿtikāf (retreat). No category of worship is prescribed in those two that is not prescribed elsewhere: there is no kissing or touching of objects, no circumambulation around anything, and nothing of that sort. They do, however, enjoy superiority over other mosques, and the reward for prayer performed in them is multiplied in comparison with prayer offered elsewhere.