Another Response

Allah is the One who grants success.

What the most eminent and peerless shaykh—a surviving exemplar of the early generations and a model for later generations, foremost among critical scholars and finest of meticulous investigators, Taqī al-Milla wa-l-Haqq wa-l-Dīn—stated in his response regarding the disagreement on this issue is correct and recorded in numerous scholarly works. There is no ground for objecting to him on this account, for it neither disparages the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, nor diminishes his standing, may Allah bless him and grant him peace.

Shaykh Abū Muhammad al-Juwaynī explicitly stated in his books that travelling to visit graves is forbidden. This is also the position adopted by the judge and imam, ‘Iyād ibn Mūsā ibn ‘Iyād, in his Ikmāl. He is among the most distinguished later scholars of our school.

Al-Mudawwana states:

“Whoever says, ‘I undertake to walk to Medina or Jerusalem,’ is not to go to either place at all unless he intends to pray in their two mosques; in that case, he is to go.”

Thus, he did not regard a vow to visit the Prophet’s grave, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, as an act of obedience that must be fulfilled, since one of our fundamental principles is that whoever vows to perform an act of obedience is bound to fulfil it