there, for the Prophet ﷺ forbade that. Rather, travel has been legislated only to the three mosques so that one may pray in them and worship Allah—glorified and exalted be He—therein, for they are the mosques of the Prophets. As for graves, no journey is to be made to them: not to the graves of prophets, nor to those of saints, nor to the graves of the righteous. One simply does not travel to them. They are visited by men only, without undertaking a journey, and they are visited for the purposes we have already mentioned: to supplicate for the dead, to ask Allah’s mercy upon them—deceased Muslims—and to take heed from their condition.

Question: What is the ruling on what some ignorant people do—sitting around graves, praying at them, eating and drinking there, and holding banquets in cemeteries?

Answer: A visit must be a visit sanctioned by the Sacred Law; its aim is what we have stated: to pray for deceased Muslims and to reflect upon the state of the dead, without travelling, and it is restricted to men.

Anything beyond that is either outright shirk (associationism) or a religious innovation. Sitting in graveyards, preparing food there, or bringing food to them—all of this is an innovation and a means that leads to shirk. Praying at graves is likewise among the things the Messenger ﷺ prohibited, for the Prophet ﷺ cursed those who turn graves into places of worship, saying, “Allah’s curse is upon the Jews and the Christians; they took the graves of their prophets as places of worship.”

Taking graves as places of worship means performing prayer at them, whether or not a mosque is built over them,