He also said, “Do not extol me as the Christians extolled Jesus son of Mary; I am only a servant, so say: the servant of Allah and His Messenger.”

He prayed, “O Allah, do not allow my grave to become an idol that is worshipped.”

He further said, “Do not take my grave as a recurring festival; rather, invoke blessings upon me, for your blessings reach me wherever you may be.”

And during his final illness he warned, “May Allah curse the Jews and the Christians; they took the graves of their prophets as places of worship”—thus cautioning against their practice. ʿĀʾishah remarked, “Had it not been for that warning, his grave would have been left open, but he disliked that it be turned into a mosque.” This is a broad topic with many details.

Although the believer knows that Allah is the Lord and Master of everything, he does not deny the causes that Allah has created. Rain, for example, is a cause for plants to grow. Allah the Exalted says: “He sends down water from the sky, and with it revives the earth after its death, and scatters upon it every kind of creature” ⦗al-Baqarah 2:164⦘. Similarly, He has made the sun and the moon causes for what He brings into existence through them, and He has made intercession (shafāʿah) and supplication (duʿāʾ) causes for what He decrees by means of them—such as the Muslims’ funeral prayer over the deceased. That prayer is one of the means by which Allah shows mercy to the departed and rewards those who perform it.