Mel: "Researching Tombs sends SIN to its grave"!

Mel has found yet another genre to confront the validity of the Standard Islamic Narrative (SIN), and this time it is TOMBS!

According to SIN, from the time of Muhammad no one was permitted to pray at graves as it was (and still is) considered ‘Bida’ (innovation, or heresy), as one is no longer praying to Allah, but to another person, and one who is dead.

Of even greater heresy was praying to Muhammad at his grave so that he can intercede for that person, as only Allah can intercede or grant forgiveness.

The 9th and 10th century Hadith are full of references forbidding Muslims to visit tombs to pray, or even to pray towards them.

Yet, in 1217 Umar ibn Jubain describes Muslims at tombs in Al-Baqi, Medina, praying at them, which suggests that this practice has been going on for over 1,000 years.

An-Nawawi, a well known and respected Sunni Shafi’ite and Hadith Scholar, in 1277 AD, stated that people went regularly to Muhammad’s tomb and asked for his intercession for their sins.

Either ibn Jubain or An-Nawawi weren’t aware of these prohibitions, or maybe the Hadith speaking about them hadn’t yet been written in the 13th century, when they were writing.

What we do know is that Ibn Taymiyya, in 1328 AD, denounces this practice of praying at tombs, which suggests that this practice was popular at his time, because he is quickly and universally denounced as a radical, and is jailed, and finally dies in jail.

Could it be that the idea of praying at tombs is first introduced by him at this time?

That idea is then resurrected by Ibn abd-al-Wahhab (d. 1792) in Medina, but tombs still weren’t destroyed, as that didn’t happen until 1806 AD, almost 500 years after Ibn Taymiyya, but those tombs were subsequently rebuilt, only to be destroyed in Medina in 1925. All of the tombs in Arabia, except Muhammad’s (which was only rescued at the last minute) were destroyed in the last century.

So, why do the 9th - 10th century Traditions speak against tomb visitations? Possibly because those Traditions weren’t written that early.

Looking at the evidence on the ground, the visitation of tombs and praying there for intercession was quite popular in the earliest centuries of Islam. However, the practice was then introduced as ‘Bida’ by Ibn Taymiyya in 1328 AD, put into practice by al-Wahhab in 1792 AD, but the tombs themselves were not destroyed until 1806 AD and 1925 AD, suggesting that this practice had nothing to do with Muhammad at all, but was a creation of Ibn Taymiyya and al-Wahhab.

Once again, Mel has found yet another genre of evidence which confronts and contradicts the Standard Islamic Narrative, proving that it was possibly written many centuries later, and then redacted back to the 9th and 10th centuries.

R.I.P. the ‘Standard Islamic Narrative’ (SIN)!

© Pfander Centre for Apologetics - US, 2021
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