[Commentary]

The author—may Allah have mercy on him—goes on to list additional groups against whom it is permissible to invoke a general curse. Among them is the Prophet’s saying, peace and blessings be upon him, “May Allah curse the Jews and the Christians; they took the graves of their prophets as places of worship.”

The Jews are the followers of Moses and the Christians are the followers of Jesus. Yet after the Prophet ﷺ was sent, and they recognized him but still refused to believe, they became alike in one ruling: both are objects of divine wrath because they knowingly abandoned the truth—may Allah protect us.

The Prophet ﷺ also clarified the reason he cursed them when he said, “they took the graves of their prophets as places of worship.” In other words, they build mosques over the graves of their prophets and pray inside them. Whoever does this is accursed by the tongue of the Prophet ﷺ—whether he is a Jew, a Christian, or someone who claims to be Muslim.

If a mosque is erected over a grave, then even if a person prays there intending worship of Allah alone and not the occupant of the grave, his prayer is invalid and forbidden; he must repeat it. That mosque itself must be demolished, and it is unlawful to perform prayer in it.

Conversely, if the mosque already existed and someone—be he a righteous person, a prince, a minister, or a leader—was later buried inside it, the grave must be exhumed and the body transferred to the public burial ground; it may not remain, for mosques were not built to house graves. They were built for prayer, remembrance of Allah, and recitation of the Quran.

If we are uncertain whether the mosque was built first and the burial occurred later, or the grave preceded the construction of the mosque, the safer course is to avoid praying there altogether so as not to endanger one’s prayer.

Someone may ask, “How can this ḥadīth be reconciled with the Prophet’s own grave, for he…"