obey their Lord’s command, not the command of any created being. As He, glorified and exalted, says:

“They say, ‘The Most Merciful has taken a son.’ Glory be to Him! Rather, they are honored servants.”

“They do not precede Him in speech, and they act by His command.”

Thus, they act only by His command, glorified and exalted is He. The permissibility of something during his lifetime does not entail its permissibility after his death. For praying in his house was a prescribed practice, and it was permissible to make it a mosque. Once he was buried there, however, it became forbidden to take it as a mosque. As reported from him, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, in the two Sahīh collections, he said:

“May Allah curse the Jews and Christians: they took the graves of their prophets as places of prayer.”

He was warning against what they had done. Were it not for that, his grave would have been left exposed, but its being taken as a place of prayer was disapproved of. In Sahīh Muslim and elsewhere, he, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, is reported to have said:

“Those before you used to take graves as places of prayer. Beware! Do not take graves as places of prayer, for I forbid you to do so.”

During his lifetime, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, people prayed behind him, and that was among the best deeds. After his death, however, it is impermissible for anyone to pray behind his grave. Likewise, during his lifetime, he could be asked to issue commands, give religious rulings, and adjudicate disputes; but it is impermissible to ask him to do these things after his death. There are many similar examples.

Mālik and others disapproved of a person saying, “I visited the grave of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace,” because this wording has not been transmitted. The hadiths reported concerning visiting his grave are all weak—indeed, fabricated.

This expression has come to bear more than one meaning in the usage of later generations. It is used to refer to an innovated form of visitation that is of the nature of associating partners with Allah: as when someone visits a grave to ask its occupant for something, to ask Allah through him, or to ask Allah at his grave.