and as a refuge for the attainment of their desires; they asked of the graves what servants are to ask only of their Lord, undertook journeys to them, rubbed themselves against them, and implored them for rescue. In short, there was nothing the pagan Arabs used to do with their idols that these people failed to do. To Allah we belong and to Him we return.

Despite this heinous abomination and appalling disbelief, we find no one who rises in anger for Allah’s sake and jealousy for the pure religion—neither scholar nor student, nor governor, minister, or king. Reports have reached us—beyond any doubt—that many, indeed most, of these grave-worshippers, when their adversary presses them to swear an oath, will swear by Allah while lying; yet if he then says, “Swear by your shaykh, by the saint you revere,” they become tongue-tied, hesitate, refuse, and admit the truth. This is one of the clearest proofs that their polytheism has exceeded even that of those who claimed that He, exalted is He, is the second of two or the third of three.

O scholars of the religion, O kings of the Muslims! What calamity for Islam is greater than disbelief? What affliction harms this faith more than worshipping other than Allah? What disaster could befall the Muslims that equals this disaster? What evil deserves to be denounced if the denunciation of this manifest shirk is not obligatory?

You would have been heard had you called to someone alive,
but there is no life in those you summon.
And if you had fanned a flame it would have shone,
but you are only blowing upon ashes.

That is the end of his words.1

Each of those two imams2 composed a treatise warning against the polytheism that had spread throughout their lands in their day. al-Ṣanʿānī authored a work entitled Purifying Belief from the Stains of Atheism, while al-Shawkānī wrote a treatise called The Cure