—contradicts it. Yet this proviso is missing here, because the hadiths that prohibit the aforementioned construction have reached the level of tawātur, as noted earlier; hence what is mentioned in the verse is not law for us.
Third: We do not concede that the verse shows this practice to have been legislated for those before us. All the verse contains is that a group of people said, “We will surely build a mosque over them.” Nowhere does it state that they were believers; and even if that were granted, the verse does not say they were upright believers adhering to the law of a divinely sent prophet. The apparent sense, in fact, suggests the opposite. Al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Rajab said in Fatḥ al-Bārī fī Sharḥ al-Bukhārī (65/280) from al-Kawākib al-Darārī (1), in his commentary on the hadith: “May Allah curse the Jews…”