Q. I recently visited the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah and noticed how the guards turn people away from his grave when they try to touch the outside walls or the gate or anything on the structure. They claimed that all this is a form of shirk, or associating partners with God.
Y. Shahid
A.Gestures differ according to the way they are used and understood in the community. The same gesture may carry opposite meanings in different communities. In Russia, for example, when the audience applaud, the speaker returns their gesture with similar applause. If this were to be done by a speaker in the Middle East or in Western Europe, it would be found very strange.
During the Prophet’s (peace be upon him) lifetime, people greeted him with gestures expressing their love and respect as was acceptable in their community. After his death, we greet him and request God to grant him peace and blessings. In this way, which he himself recommended, we express our love and respect to him.
When visiting one’s relatives’ graves, the proper thing to do is to greet the dead and to pray God to shower His mercy on them. No gesture of touching the grave or wailing is permissible. When standing before the grave of a highly respected person, such as a scholar or an ancestor, we should confine ourselves to verbal prayers and greetings. The same applies to visiting the Prophet’s grave. We stand there in all humility, greeting the Prophet and declaring our belief in him as God’s messenger who delivered His message complete and guided us to follow it, giving us good counsel.
We pray to God to reward him as He best rewards a prophet and a messenger. To touch or kiss the walls of his grave is wrong. It is indeed a gesture similar to what polytheists used to do. Islam takes a very strong attitude to any gesture or action that is associated in people’s minds with worship. People who worshiped ancestors, or saints, or dead people often indulge in actions that are not permissible in Islam. One of these is to touch the grave, or to hold to its gate and pray to God. All this is unacceptable.
Obligatory Sunnah
Q. Could you please explain the most important Sunnah, the omission of which constitutes a sin?
K. Shaikh
A. To suggest that one incurs a sin for omitting something means that doing that thing is obligatory. Thus, Dhuhr prayer is obligatory, and to deliberately omit doing it incurs a sin, because one fails to meet one’s obligation. When a person commits such a sin, one is subject to punishment by God, unless one repents and seeks forgiveness.
On the other hand, a Sunnah is something that the Prophet (peace be upon him) has recommended to us, and doing a Sunnah increases our reward from God. It is a voluntary action that we do of our own accord, following the Prophet’s recommendation, knowing that he only taught us what is good for us. This means that a Sunnah is not obligatory, but rather a voluntary action that earns God’s pleasure.
To suggest that there is an obligatory Sunnah is to make a contradictory statement. What is Sunnah is recommended: To do it is to earn reward, but to omit it incurs no sin.
The reader has not mentioned in which area he is asking about the Sunnah, because the Prophet recommended things in practically all aspects. If it is prayer, then the two rak’ahs before Fajr and the Witr after Isha are the most important, followed by two rak’ahs before Dhuhr and two after it, as well as two after Maghrib and two after Isha. But the omission of any of these does not constitute a sin.
