is obvious in the case of those who expressly regarded the building of mosques over graves as reprehensible. As for those who went further and explicitly prohibited other practices—such as raising the grave, pitching a tent over it, and the like, matters we have just summarized—their affirmation that the original ruling still stands applies all the more so, for two reasons:

First, constructing mosques over graves is a more serious offense than merely elevating a grave or erecting a tent upon it, because the texts pronounce a curse on the former but not on the latter.

Second, the early generations are presumed to have possessed insight and knowledge. Therefore, when it is authentically reported that one of them forbade something less serious than what the Lawgiver himself prohibited, and we possess no explicit statement from him about that greater matter, we can be certain that he would have forbidden it as well—even if, hypothetically, the particular prohibition had not reached him—because forbidding the lesser necessarily entails forbidding the greater, as is self-evident.