praise.
- He – peace and blessings be upon him – also forbade fulfilling a vow if it was to be carried out at a spot where an idol is worshipped or where one of the festivals of pre-Islamic ignorance is observed.
All of this he prohibited as a safeguard for pure monotheism, to preserve it, and to block every means and pretext that could lead to polytheism.
Yet, despite the Prophet’s exhaustive clarifications and his strict precautions to keep the ummah far from shirk, many people went against his Sunnah in the matter of graves. They disobeyed his directive and committed what he had forbidden: they erected domes over graves, built mosques upon them, embellished them with every kind of decoration, and devoted to them various acts of worship besides Allah.
The eminent scholar Ibn al-Qayyim (d. 751 AH) said:
“Whoever compares the Messenger’s Sunnah regarding graves—what he commanded, what he forbade, and what his Companions practised—with the conduct of most people today will find the two utterly opposed and contradictory, never to coexist. The Messenger of Allah forbade praying toward graves, yet these people pray at them and toward them. He forbade taking them as places of worship, yet they build mosques over them and call them ‘shrines,’ imitating the Houses of Allah. He forbade kindling lamps upon them, yet they allocate endowments for lighting lanterns there. He forbade turning them into festivals, yet they make them festive gathering places and rites, assembling there as they do for the ‘Id—indeed, even more. He ordered that graves be leveled; Muslim recorded in his Ṣaḥīḥ from Abu al-Hayyaj al-Asadi who said: ‘ʿAlī—may Allah be pleased with him—told me, “Shall I not send you on the mission for which the Messenger of Allah sent me: do not leave an image without obliterating it, nor an elevated grave without leveling it?”’ But these people go to extremes in opposing that ḥadith: they raise graves above ground like houses, construct domes over them, and so forth. He forbade plastering the grave or building upon it, as Muslim also narrated from Jābir—may Allah be pleased with him—“that the Messenger of Allah forbade plastering the grave, building over it, and sitting…”