object to it, that such ornamentation is a “praiseworthy innovation,” and that it draws people to the mosque. These proofs carry no weight with anyone whom Allah has granted a share of right guidance—especially when they collide with the hadiths showing that decoration never formed part of the Prophet’s directives, that it is a prohibited kind of self-aggrandizement, that it is one of the portents of the Hour, as is related from ʿAlī (may Allah ennoble his face), and that it originates with the Jews and Christians—whom the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, loved to oppose in both general and specific matters.
The claim that the early generations voiced no objection is unfounded, for decoration is an innovation (bidʿah) introduced by tyrannical regimes without consulting the scholars and the virtuous. They produced so many innovations that they cannot be counted, and scarcely anyone dared to rebuke them; the scholars kept silent out of fear, not out of approval. Yet a number of scholars who sought the hereafter did confront their falsehood and raised their voices in the very midst of them, openly censuring it.
The assertion that it is a “commendable innovation” is false; we have already demonstrated its invalidity when commenting on the hadith, “Whoever introduces into this affair of ours something that is not part of it, it is rejected,” in the chapter on praying in a garment of silk or of usurped property.
Equally unsound is the claim that decoration attracts people to the mosque, for it can only entice someone whose sole aim is to gaze at those patterns and ornaments. As for the one who enters the mosques to worship Allah—a worship that is genuine only with humility, otherwise it is like a body without a soul—such adornment is nothing but a distraction. The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, acted accordingly with the striped cloth (anbajaniyyah) he returned to Abū Jahm, as with his tearing down of curtains that bore designs, and as will be mentioned in the chapter “Keeping the worshipper’s qiblah free from anything that distracts.”
Thus the distorted innovations devised by kings drive scholars into precarious paths