First: this is an admission on his part that such travel is not a righteous deed, a means of drawing near to Allah, an act of obedience, or a good deed. Thus, whoever believes that travelling to visit the graves of the prophets and the righteous is a means of drawing near to Allah, an act of worship, and an act of obedience has contradicted scholarly consensus. If he travels in the belief that doing so is an act of obedience, this is forbidden by the consensus of the Muslims. The prohibition therefore arises from treating it as a means of drawing near to Allah, and it is well known that no one travels to these graves except for that purpose. If, however, a man vows to travel to them for a permissible purpose, that is permissible and does not fall into this category.

Second: this hadith entails a prohibition, and a prohibition entails that the act is forbidden. As for the hadiths they cite concerning visiting the Prophet’s grave, peace and blessings be upon him, they are all weak according to the consensus of hadith scholars; indeed, they are fabricated. None of the compilers of the authoritative Sunan collections narrated any of them, nor did any of the imams cite any of them as evidence. Rather, Mālik—the imam of the people of the Prophet’s city, who are the most knowledgeable about the ruling on this matter—disapproved of a man saying, “I visited his grave, peace and blessings be upon him.” Had this expression been familiar among them, sanctioned by the religion, or transmitted from the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, the scholar of Medina would not have disapproved of it.

As for Imam Ahmad, the most knowledgeable person of his time concerning the Sunnah, when he was asked about this, he did not