Our reply is as follows:

First: There is nothing surprising about your objection, for rejecting that practice is the true position. Visiting the rawdah (the area between the Prophet’s pulpit and his grave) for the sake of blessing and good fortune is a polytheistic, innovated aim—one that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ never sanctioned. He only legislated entering it so that people might pray there and worship Allah within it.

Second: As for his claim that the leading Imams would send peace upon the Prophet ﷺ every time they passed by his grave or were about to travel, this has no basis whatsoever. No proof supports it, and the Shaykh himself never transmitted such a report; rather, he conveyed the opposite—namely, that they did not make repeated visits to the Prophet’s grave whenever they entered the mosque. The Messenger ﷺ forbade that when he said, “Do not make my grave a festival,” meaning: do not keep frequenting it and gathering around it. They would greet him only upon returning from a journey, just as Ibn ʿUmar used to do: when he came back from travel he would simply say, “Peace be upon you, O Messenger of Allah; peace be upon you, O Abu Bakr; peace be upon you, O my father,” and then depart. Besides, what connection is there between greeting the Messenger and the rawdah? The rawdah is inside the mosque, whereas during the Companions’ time his grave lay outside the mosque—may Allah be pleased with them all.

(z) He also says: “To proceed: we affirm that seeking blessing by visiting the Prophet’s grave is praiseworthy. The blessing we have in mind is not an act of worship, nor anything close to it; rather, it is a matter of remembrance, reflection, and insight.” Our answer is: first, drawing near to Allah through the Prophet’s grave—or through any particular spot, tree, or stone—is reprehensible, not praiseworthy, except in the eyes of the ignorant and the grave-worshippers. It is shirk because it attaches one’s heart to other than Allah and seeks blessing from someone besides Him. When some Companions—still new to Islam—saw the idolaters seeking blessing from a tree and asked the Prophet ﷺ to designate a similar tree for them, he strongly rebuked their request.