What the Muslims, earlier and later generations alike, have unanimously agreed upon, century after century, is travelling to his mosque—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—and invoking blessings and peace upon him there, and similar deeds beloved to Allah and His Messenger. These deeds entail worshipping Allah alone and fulfilling the rights of His Messenger, and are among the finest acts of worship offered to Allah, as are our testimony to his messengership and our praise of him. Invoking blessings and peace upon him is among the finest ways in which we worship Allah. This and similar practices are what is prescribed in his mosque, whether or not they are called visiting his grave.

Neither the expression “visiting his grave” nor the recommendation of doing so is known to have come from any of the Companions. Rather, what is transmitted from Ibn ʿUmar and those who followed his practice is greeting him there with peace and invoking blessings upon him. They did not call this visiting his grave. What, then, of those who never stood at the grave at all—the majority of the Companions?

As for the polytheistic practices and religious innovations that some people have introduced and called “visiting his grave,” these belong to the same category as the innovated visits made to other people’s graves, not to visits prescribed by the Sharia. As for practices that fall within what the Sharia prescribes, these are recommended by his authentically established Sunnah and the consensus of his community.

Yet some leading scholars do not call this “visiting his grave”; indeed, they dislike this designation, let alone describe it as travelling to his grave. Those who have expressed this view, such as Mālik and others, have explicitly stated that if a person travelling there