Thus the Messenger of Allah—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—forbade praying toward graves, yet these people pray beside them. He forbade turning them into mosques, yet they build mosques over them and call them “shrines,” in imitation of the houses of Allah. He forbade lighting lamps upon them, yet they endow funds specifically to keep lanterns burning there. He forbade making them seasonal gatherings, yet they make them festivals and rites, assembling for them as they do for the ‘Eid—if not in even greater numbers.

He also ordered that graves be leveled. Muslim records in his Ṣaḥīḥ that Abū al-Hayyāj al-Asadī said: ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib—may Allah be pleased with him—told me, “Shall I not send you with the same commission with which the Messenger of Allah—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—sent me: do not leave any image without obliterating it, and do not leave any elevated grave without leveling it.”’ Muslim likewise narrates from Thumāmah ibn Shufayy, who said: ‘We were with Fuḍālah ibn ʿUbayd in Byzantine territory, on Rhodes, when one of our companions died. Fuḍālah ordered that his grave be leveled, saying, “I heard the Messenger of Allah—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—command that graves be leveled.”’ (1)

Yet these people do the exact opposite of these two hadith, raising the graves above ground like houses,