“that practice is makruh (disliked). If someone prays in that spot seeking its blessing, he has invented in the religion what Allah never authorized; the ‘dislike’ intended here is the lighter form, karahat al-tanzih.” Al-Nawawi comments: “So have our scholars stated. Were one to call it haram, given the plain wording, that would not be far-fetched. The hadith also entails a prohibition of praying in a cemetery; therefore the prayer there is makruh in the sense of karahat al-tahrim (prohibitively disliked).” In al-Umm (1/246) al-Shafi‘i writes: “I dislike that a mosque be built over a grave, that it be levelled, that prayer be performed upon it while it is still raised, or that prayer be directed toward it.” He adds: “If someone does pray toward it, the prayer is technically valid but he has done wrong. Malik related to us that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, ‘May Allah curse the Jews and Christians; they turned the graves of their prophets into mosques.’ I dislike this on account of the sunnah and the reports, and because—Allah knows best—the Prophet disliked that any Muslim’s grave be honored by making it a mosque, for fear of the temptation and misguidance that might afflict later generations.” The hadith cited from Malik is formally mu‘dal (with two missing narrators) yet is extremely sound, being found in the two Sahihs and elsewhere through several Companions: ‘Aishah, Ibn ‘Abbas, Abu Hurayrah, Zayd ibn Thabit, Abu ‘Ubaydah ibn al-Jarrah, and Usamah ibn Zayd. Additional supporting reports come from ‘Aishah again, Jundub ibn ‘Abd Allah al-Bajali, Ibn Mas‘ud, Abu Sa‘id al-Khudri, and—mursalan—from ‘Ata’ ibn Yasar. I have traced all these narrations and quoted their wording in Ta‘liqat al-jiyad, where I set out the major legal points they establish—points most Muslims have neglected, leading them to fall into excess in venerating the awliya (saints) and the righteous, honoring them beyond the limits of the Sharia. The jurist Ibn Hajar al-Haytami says in al-Zawajir ‘an Iqtiraf al-Kaba’ir (p. 121):