even more rampant among the ignorant of this ummah—and I do not mean the layfolk as a whole! If this is the condition of the Muslims today, and was so even before today, how can this man say, “The reason for the ruling has disappeared now that faith is firmly rooted in the hearts of the believers…”?

If, by “the believers,” he intends the Companions—may Allah be pleased with them—there is no doubt that they were genuine believers who understood perfectly the essence of the monotheism brought to them by the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. Yet the Islamic law is universal and eternal; therefore, even if the cause really were absent with respect to them—which itself is unproven—that would in no way require the ruling to lapse for those who came after, because the cause is still present, and the facts on the ground testify to that beyond dispute.

Second point: From the foregoing hadiths you have learned that the Prophet ﷺ, at the very end of his life—in fact, during the illness that led to his death—warned his ummah against turning graves into mosques. When, then, did the cause he mentioned disappear? If someone claims it vanished immediately after he ﷺ passed away, this would contradict the consensus of all Muslims that the best of people are those of his generation, for such a claim would necessarily entail—based on his own words—that faith had not yet taken firm root in the hearts of