take graves as places of prayer. Beware: do not take graves as places of prayer, for I forbid you to do so.”

If this is forbidden and brings the Lord’s anger and curse, then what of someone who deliberately invokes the deceased, supplicates beside him and through him, and believes that these are means of having supplications answered, obtaining what he seeks and having his needs fulfilled?

This was the initial cause of shirk among Noah’s people and of idol worship among humankind. Ibn ‘Abbās said:

“There were ten generations between Adam and Noah, all of them following Islam. Then shirk arose through the veneration of the graves of their righteous people.”

It has been widely transmitted from Ibn ‘Abbās and others, in Sahīh al-Bukhārī, works of Quranic commentary and accounts of the prophets, concerning Allah’s words:

“And they said, ‘Never leave your gods and never leave Wadd or Suwā‘ or Yaghūth and Ya‘ūq and Nasr.’”

These were righteous men among Noah’s people. When they died, the people remained devotedly at their graves, then made images of them and worshipped them. Ibn ‘Abbās said: “These idols subsequently came to be found among the Arab tribes.”

A group of heretical philosophers who held the world to be eternal introduced yet another aspect of shirk in their discussions of visiting graves. Ibn Sīnā discussed this, as did those who took their ideas from him, such as the author of al-Kutub al-Madnūn bihā (The Withheld Books) and others. They explained intercession according to their own foundational doctrine. They do not acknowledge that Allah created the heavens and the earth in six days, or that He knows particulars, hears the voices of His servants and answers their supplications.

According to their doctrine, the intercession of prophets and righteous people is not what the believers understand it to be: a supplication offered by a righteous man which Allah answers. Likewise, when rain falls following their supplication for rain, they do not consider its cause to be the answering of their supplication. Rather, they claim that what brings about events in the world is the powers of the soul or the movements