Ahmad also permitted a mosque built at ground level to be raised and a drinking-water facility to be constructed beneath it for a beneficial purpose. If the neighbours disagreed, some saying, “We are elderly and cannot climb the stairs,” while others favoured its construction, Ahmad said: “Consider what the majority prefer.”

Some scholars of his school interpreted this as referring to the mosque’s initial construction. However, the discerning scholars of his school recognize that this interpretation is mistaken, because his explicit statements in several places clearly permit relocating a mosque.

If, then, Ahmad sanctioned what the Companions did when they converted a mosque site to another use for a beneficial purpose—even though a mosque has greater sanctity than other sites, for it is established in Sahīh Muslim, on the authority of Abū Hurayrah, that the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said:

“The places most beloved to Allah are their mosques, and the places most hated by Allah are their marketplaces”—

then, if it is permissible, for a beneficial purpose, to turn a site possessing sanctity and shared by the Muslims into a site without that sanctity, it is all the more permissible and appropriate to turn a shared site that does not possess such sanctity, such as a wide road, into a site possessing sanctity and forming part of an existing sacred site. There is no doubt that mosques have greater sanctity than roads, while both provide a shared benefit.