standing with Allah, and we seek to draw near through their rank and their intercession. Yet these people have forgotten—or chosen to forget, while they recite the Quran—that this is the very argument of the idol-worshippers, as Allah relates in His Book:

“They worship, instead of Allah, that which can neither harm them nor benefit them, and they say, ‘These are our intercessors with Allah.’ Say, ‘Do you inform Allah of something He does not know in the heavens or on the earth?’ Exalted and High is He above what they associate with Him.” 1

And He says:

“Behold, to Allah alone belongs pure devotion. But those who take protectors besides Him say, ‘We worship them only so that they may bring us nearer to Allah.’ Allah will judge between them regarding that over which they differ. Indeed, Allah does not guide anyone who is a lying disbeliever.” 2

Thus He branded them as lying disbelievers, even though they regarded those “saints” as nothing more than intermediaries between themselves and Allah for the fulfillment of their needs. This is exactly what today’s grave-worshippers claim—“their hearts are alike.” 3

Accordingly, it is mandatory for the scholars of Islam to denounce this repugnant form of shirk and make its reality clear to the people, and it is incumbent upon Muslim rulers to demolish these idols and purify the mosques from them.

Many reforming imams have already condemned, forbidden, and warned against this shirk. Among them are Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah, his student Ibn al-Qayyim, Shaykh Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, Shaykh Muhammad ibn Isma‘il al-San‘ani, Shaykh Muhammad ibn Ali al-Shawkani, and numerous other scholars, past and present—whose writings lie before us.

Concerning this, Imam al-Shawkani remarks in Nayl al-Awtar: “How many evils—at which Islam weeps—have spread through the erection and adornment of tomb-structures! Among them is the belief of the ignorant, a belief akin to, and even worse than, the idolaters’ view of their idols: they imagine those tombs capable of bringing benefit and warding off harm, so they make them a destination for the fulfillment of needs and the refuge of every petitioner. They ask of them what servants should ask only of their Lord, undertake journeys to them, rub themselves against them, and cry for help through them.”