Islam, and the most ignorant of the lives of the Messenger and his Companions, and of his conduct, sayings, and deeds. Such a person needs to learn what he does not know of the religion of Islam, so that he may enter Islam rather than accept some of it and abandon the rest. His mosque was founded upon piety in the first year after the Hijrah, and it is the finest mosque on earth except for the Sacred Mosque. It has also been said that it is the finest without exception.

Would any rational person say that Muslim mosques—the congregational mosques in which Friday and other prayers are offered—derive their merit, and the recommendation to go there to pray, from a nearby grave? If this cannot be said of such mosques, how could it be said of one that is better and more excellent than them all?

According to the majority of scholars, the “Sacred Mosque” is the finest of all mosques without exception, and a prayer there is equivalent to a hundred thousand prayers, as reported in the Musnad and the Sunan collections. Would any rational person say that its merit is due to a grave there?

“Al-Aqsā Mosque” is the finest mosque after the Prophet’s Mosque, and Jerusalem contains so many graves of prophets that only Allah can count them. Would any rational person say that its merit is due to those graves? Indeed, this is what Christians believe: they believe that Jerusalem owes its merit to the “church” said to have been built over the grave of the crucified man, and they regard it as superior to Jerusalem’s sanctuary. These people are among the most misguided and ignorant of all.