Yet when they saw him they would not rise to their feet, knowing how much he disliked that. When Muʿadh prostrated before him, the Prophet forbade him and said:

“It is not permissible to prostrate except to Allah. Had I been going to command anyone to prostrate to another, I would have ordered a wife to prostrate to her husband, because of the greatness of his right over her.”

And when ʿAlī was brought the heretics who had gone to excess concerning him and claimed divinity for him, he ordered that they be burned in the fire.

Such is the way of Allah’s Prophets and His friends. Only those who seek high station on earth and sow corruption—like Pharaoh and those of his ilk, and the misguided shaykhs whose aim is domination and mischief—approve of exaggerated and unwarranted veneration. The trials that lead people to exalt the Prophets and the pious, to take them as lords and associate partners with Allah, arise during their absence and after their death, just as partners were associated through the Messiah and Ezra.