spending, which is forbidden; and it occupies people’s hearts, robbing them of the reverent humility (khushūʿ) that is the very soul of worship.
4 – From his ﷺ words, “I have not been commanded,” we learn that such embellishment is unfitting; had it been praiseworthy or a means of drawing nearer to Allah, He would have commanded it. In Islam a mosque is simply a structure that shields worshippers from heat and cold and shelters them from rain. Anything beyond that distracts the heart and squanders wealth.
5 – Sharḥ al-Iqnaʿ states: “It is disliked to adorn a mosque with carvings, paint, inscriptions, and the like, for such things divert the worshipper from his prayer.”
6 – The Prophet’s ﷺ mosque was built of unfired bricks; its roof was made of palm-frond stalks and its pillars of palm trunks. Abū Bakr (may Allah be pleased with him) made no additions to it. When the wood and thatching decayed in the time of ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb (may Allah be pleased with him), he rebuilt it as it had been and enlarged it somewhat. During ʿUthmān’s caliphate (may Allah be pleased with him) it was expanded considerably: its walls were rebuilt with stone and gypsum, its pillars were fashioned from stone, and its roof was covered with teak—measures that strengthened the structure without introducing ornamentation.
Ibn Baṭṭāl said: “This shows that the sunnah in constructing mosques is to avoid excess in beautifying them. Although ʿUmar enjoyed many conquests and abundant wealth, he did not alter the mosque’s original simplicity; likewise, in ʿUthmān’s era it was enlarged, yet not embellished.”