“No! No one sees the Prophet’s grave”

The title of today’s piece as appeared above in quotes was the response to one of the questions I asked the Director of the Exhibition Center located at Prophet Muhammad’s mosque in Madinah. Readers would recall from the serialized piece which third and concluding part was published on this page last week that I was privileged to be one of the guests of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosque, King Salman bin AbdulAzeez Al-Saud, during the recently concluded 2018 Hajj exercise. Besides the group visit that was organized for us as guests, I sought and obtained an appointment to have a private audience with the Director of the Exhibition Center. My interactive session with him was fixed for 5pm on Sunday August 26, 2018.

I arrived at the Exhibition Center on schedule. The center is an underground 2-storey structure that is about 10 meters away from Gate 3 of the Prophet’s mosque. The Exhibition Center and the Gate 3 are both to the qiblah (prayer direction) of the holy mosque of the Prophet (SAW). When I got to the Exhibition Center, the guard at the entrance directed me to use the escalator to climb down to the second floor of the underground structure. As I reached the office, I was ushered into the Director’s office that was waiting to receive me. Formal introductions took place between the two of us. He introduced himself as Faiz Aliyu Muhammad al-Faiz.

Without any delays, Shaykh Faiz supported by another staff of the Exhibition Center led me in to the Exhibition Hall. He informed me that the Exhibition Centre was established in 1993; 21 years after King Fahd ascended to the royal throne. I was thereafter taken round the various display stands. Some of the items preserved and coated in glass shelves include the earliest scripts of the holy Qur’an; copy of the prophet’s seal; a copy of the letter on which the Prophet (SAW) used the seal; and photographs taken during the various stages of the construction of the Prophet’s mosque in Madinah. One of these photographs shows where construction workers were laying floor tiles. I asked if there was anything special about the tiles. He told me that they are not ordinary tiles because they are heat-resistant. The more the sun heats up the tiles, the cooler they become. Shaykh Faiz explained that the tiles are made from a particular mountain in Italy. He further told me that the government of the Royal Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has since paid for and taken complete ownership of this mountain in Italy from which the special tiles are made.

In the Exhibition Hall, I was also to be shown some video clips on the reconstruction of the Two Holy Mosques but I declined the offer because time was not on my side as we were due to depart Madinah to Jeddah for our trip back to Nigeria. Instead, I sought to have a short interview session with Shaykh Faiz. My first question was: “Is it true that some VIPs are allowed access to see the Prophet’s grave without any barrier standing between them and the grave?” Shaykh Faiz replied “No! No one sees the Prophet’s grave? He took time to say so much on this matter. Shaykh Faiz explained that Prophet Muhammad (SAW) was buried in the room of his wife, Aisha (daughter of Abubakr as-Sadiq, the Second Caliph in Islam). The Prophet’s house including Aisha’s room has since become part of the holy mosque.

Shaykh Faiz stated that since Aisha died in 58AH (678AD), her room where the Prophet’s grave is sited was never opened to anyone until the 88th year After Hijrah (AH) when a section of the room fell down and was re-built by Caliph Umar Bin AbdulAzeez. During this particular re-construction of the room, Shaykh Faiz said the door to the room was removed and the room was thus rebuilt without a door. He affirmed that no door was provided in any of the four walls of the room; adding that the room had since then remained sealed and would permanently remain like that until end of time. Shaykh Faiz thus asked me: “If there is no door leading into the room, how could anyone claim to have entered into it to see the Prophet’s grave?” I replied: “It’s certainly not possible to enter into the room; let alone see the grave”.

Moved by these eye-opening explanations, I asked Shaykh Faiz “Are you saying that even King Salman Bin AbdulAzeez had never seen the Prophet’s grave?” He answered in the affirmative and said “Not even King Fahad saw Prophet’s grave”. He said the sealing of Aisha’s room was Allah’s way of answering the Prophet’s prayer in which he (SAW) prayed to Allah (SWT) to guide his Ummah (community) against turning his grave into a place of worship. Imam Bukhari and Imam Malik separately report in their collections of hadith that the Prophet (SAW) said, “O Allah, do not make my grave an idol to be worshipped after me. Allah was very angry with people who took graves of their prophets as places of worship”.

I requested Shaykh Faiz to comment on the pictures posted on the social media which are claimed to be photographs of the Prophet’s grave. He said, “They are certainly fake photographs”, based on the information he had given me. He further observed that besides the fake photographs of the Prophet’s grave, there are other items which some people have posted on the internet; claiming they are relics of Prophet Muhammad (SAW). These forged items, according to Shaykh Faiz, include hair of the Prophet (SAW), his beard, turban, tooth, cloak, sandals, eating bowl, etc. He said they are all fake items forged by people to make money. He said the Turks are more culpable than others for forging fake items in the name of the Prophet (SAW). Faiz said “these fabrications are many on the internet’.

Let us be cautious in accepting as the whole truth all the things we come across on the internet; particularly on the social media. It would be the pleasure of this writer that today’s piece would guide readers to regard the purported pictures of the Prophet’s grave, sandals and hair currently in circulation as relics of Prophet Muhammad (SAW) as fake. May Allah (SWT) guide us all to see falsehood as falsehood and understand truth as it is, amin.