Is the prayer valid in a mosque from which graves were dug up and moved outside the mosque?

The questioner : Praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds. We have here a case where a mosque was expanded, and then you spoke about the graveyards. This mosque was expanded on the land of a graveyard; the bones were removed from the graveyard, the graves were cleared, and the mosque building was constructed on top of it. Is the prayer valid in this mosque or not?

The Shaykh : This question was answered before. Were you not with us?

The questioner : But I wanted the details, because I felt that some scholars said that prayer in the mosque is not permissible.

The Shaykh : We have already answered this very question, and perhaps you will remember it, if Allah wills, when we brought up the house of al-Ma'arri:
"Behold, these are our graves that fill the spacious hall *** So where are the graves of the time of 'Ad?"
"Tread lightly, for I think the skin of the earth *** Is nothing but these bodies."
Have you not heard this poetry? I heard it! This was the occasion for the answer to the question posed by the brother here, which is that there was a mosque in whose courtyard there were graves, so they were dug up and buried outside the mosque. Is the prayer valid in this mosque? The answer is yes, because we said that the Wise Lawgiver, first of all, looks at the apparent. We gave an example: if there were an apparent grave, but inside there is absolutely nothing, as is reported about some of the deceiver types. Perhaps you have heard their story: when they built an apparent grave and constructed a dome over it, and spread among the people that so-and-so, a person named Zayd, saw in a dream that one of the awliya (close friends of Allah) and the righteous was buried here. They spread these reports, and the people, as you know, follow every caller, so the followers came, bringing visitors, gifts, and vows, and so on. These two, one day, disagreed with each other, and their disagreement reached the point where one of them said to his companion, meaning the story is that he swore by...The Shaykh : He says to me, "O Haman, there is no shaykh and no chicken here. We took this up only to bring in money." The point is that this is an apparent grave, and it is not permissible to seek it out, even if we know that there is absolutely no burial beneath it. For this reason, since my youth, I have left praying in the greatest mosque in all of Syria and in Damascus, which is the Umayyad Mosque. Why? Because there is a grave there, they claim the head of Yahya (peace be upon him) is in it—not all of Yahya, only his head. And there is grandeur, a dome, and gold plating, and so on. The people seek it out for seeking blessing and supplication, and so on. So I left praying in this mosque for decades, and I am the first to believe that there is no grave there, but there is the appearance of a grave. Islam builds all matters and rulings on the apparent, and Allah takes charge of the secrets. Therefore, if there is a mosque with the image of a grave, the prayer is not valid in it and is not permissible. If there is a mosque with no apparent grave, but it is said that the whole land is graves, that is not important, because there is no apparent grave that is sought out and worshipped and called upon besides Allah the Exalted, as our Lord the Exalted mentioned and warned: So the existence of the image of a grave is not the reality of a grave. This alone is sufficient for calling upon it besides Allah the Exalted. And the absence of the image of a grave, even if the land were all filled with the rot of the dead and their blood, and so on, that does not harm. But if there was land on which there were apparent graves, and then one wanted to build a mosque on it for one reason or another, so they were dug up and bones appeared, and they were removed, and then the land was leveled, then the prayer in it is valid. This is what I mentioned in summary as an answer to the question of the brother Abu Bilal, which is as if you have returned to it and directed it again, perhaps the answer has become clear to you?

The questioner : It has become clear...

The Shaykh: All right.