What is wrong with these people? They commit reprehensible acts whose outward form is sheer shirk (polytheism) and misguidance, yet they excuse them on the pretext of their allegedly good intentions! Allah knows that many of them hold corrupted beliefs into which shirk has crept, whether they are aware of it or not; such is the recompense for what they have earned, for they have cast the Prophet’s hadith behind their backs. (2) This hadith is authentic. It was recorded by Muslim (3/62); Abu Dawud (1/71); al-Nasaʾi (1/124); al-Tirmidhi (1/195, Bulaq ed.); Ibn Khuzayma (1/95/2 = 2/8/794); al-Tahawi (1/296); al-Bayhaqi (p. 435); and Ahmad (4/135) on the authority of Abu Marthad al-Ghanawi, as a Prophetic statement. Al-Nasaʾi and al-Tahawi report it in the wording: “Do not pray toward graves, and do not sit on them,” a wording also found in Muslim and Ahmad. It has a corroborating narration from Ibn Abbas, produced by al-Maqdisi through al-Tabarani’s chain from ʿAbd Allah b. Kaysan, from ʿIkrima, with the wording: “Do not pray toward a grave, and do not pray upon a grave.” Al-Maqdisi remarks: “Concerning ʿAbd Allah b. Kaysan, al-Bukhari said, ‘his hadith is munkar’; Abu Hatim al-Razi said, ‘weak’; and al-Nasaʾi said, ‘not strong.’ Nevertheless, because Ibn Khuzayma and al-Busti included his report, we have cited it.” See also my works: Warning the Worshipper against Taking Graves as Places of Prayer and Funerary Rulings and Their Innovations.