If Not Medina, Then Where؟ A reading of Mohamed Al-Sadiq’s article “Applications of the Structural

11:07 AM October, 04 2026

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If Not Medina, Then Where؟
A reading of Mohamed Al-Sadiq’s article “Applications of the Structural Approach: The Mosques of Pilgrimage-Travel Are Four — and Medina Is Not Among Them”

Dr. Ali Abdullahi Elkhalifa Taha

Introduction
I have read Mr. Mohamed Al-Sadiq’s article, in which he applies what he calls “the structural unity of revelation” to the question of travelling for worship (shadd al-riḥāl). He concludes that the mosques to which one may set out on such a journey are four — the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, Bayt al-Maqdis (Jerusalem), the Mosque of Mount Ṭūr, and the Sacred Mosque in Mecca — and that the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina is not among them. Let me begin with where I agree with the author before turning to where I differ. His insistence that the Qur’an be the “fixed ground” against which narrations are measured is an aim no Muslim would dispute, and his attention to the sacred geography of Sūrat al-Tīn is a perceptive observation with roots in the classical exegetical literature. Yet a sound method, applied with imprecise tools, can lead to a conclusion that the Qur’an itself rejects — and that is rejected, before anything else, by the very texts the author cites.
1. The Author’s Own Texts Testify Against His Conclusion
The first thing that strikes the reader is that both hadiths on which the author builds his case mention Medina explicitly. The hadith from the Musnad of Imam Aḥmad, which he himself quotes, names the four mosques the Antichrist (al-Dajjāl) will not approach: “the Sacred Mosque, the Mosque of Medina, the Mosque of al-Ṭūr, and Bayt al-Maqdis.” The Prophet’s Mosque is thus present in the author’s own text; what is absent from it is the Umayyad Mosque, which the author places first among his four.
The hadith of Abū Baṣra al-Ghifārī is even more explicit. Abū Baṣra objected to Abū Hurayra’s journey to Mount Ṭūr, citing the Prophet’s words: “Do not set out on a journey except to three mosques: the Sacred Mosque, Bayt al-Maqdis, and my mosque.” The very narration the author brings forward thus excludes the Mosque of al-Ṭūr from such journeys, and affirms the Prophet’s Mosque in his own word: “my mosque.” When a list contains one site that its own source negates, another site found in neither of its sources, and omits a site found in both, the fault does not lie with the narrations.
Moreover, the two hadiths belong to two different subjects. The Dajjāl hadith concerns places God will protect from his trial; the hadith on setting out concerns places where the reward of prayer is multiplied and to which one travels as an act of devotion. Merging them into a single list requires evidence the author does not supply. Even so, Medina’s protection from the Dajjāl is also established in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī: “At the entrances of Medina are angels; neither plague nor the Dajjāl shall enter it.”
2. Sūrat al-Tīn: What Did the Exegetes Actually Say؟
The opinions the author cites from Qatāda, Ibn Zayd and Ibn ʿAbbās are indeed found in the Tafsīr of al-Ṭabarī — but they are only part of what is there. Al-Ṭabarī also records the view that the fig (al-tīn) is the fig that is eaten and the olive (al-zaytūn) is the olive pressed for oil, and he prefers this view because it is the meaning known in the Arabic speech in which the Qur’an was revealed. Al-Ṭabarī, whom the author invokes, does not hold the author’s conclusion.
Ibn Kathīr relays from some of the imams an interpretation closer to the context of the sūra: that God swears by three places, in each of which He sent a messenger of firm resolve bearing a law — the land of the fig and the olive, where Jesus was sent; Mount Sinai, where God spoke to Moses; and the Secure City, where Muhammad ﷺ was sent. The oath in the sūra, then, is by the sites of prophecy and the descent of revelation, not by a list of mosques to be travelled to.
Above all, Sūrat al-Tīn is a Meccan sūra, revealed before the Prophet’s Mosque was built and before the Prophet ﷺ emigrated. One cannot expect the Prophet’s Mosque to be mentioned in an oath revealed before it existed, nor can its absence from the sūra be taken as evidence for excluding it. As for the author’s claim that the Prophet ﷺ “explained” the four mosques upon the revelation of the sūra, he cites no narration to support it.
3. The Umayyad Mosque Does Not Date from the Time of John the Baptist
The author gives precedence to the Umayyad Mosque on the grounds that it is “far older than the Prophet’s Mosque because it is connected to the Prophet Yaḥyā (John the Baptist).” What is historically established is that the Umayyad Mosque was built by the Caliph al-Walīd ibn ʿAbd al-Malik between 86 and 96 AH, on the site of the Church of St John the Baptist, which had itself replaced a Roman temple. Its connection to John is a connection to a shrine attributed to him, not to a mosque standing since his time; as a building, the Umayyad Mosque is more than eighty years younger than the Prophet’s Mosque.
Furthermore, the criterion of antiquity does not lead where the author wishes. The Qur’an identifies the first house of worship: ﴿Indeed, the first House established for mankind is the one at Bakka — blessed, and a guidance for all the worlds﴾ [Āl ʿImrān 3:96], and the two Ṣaḥīḥ collections report that al-Masjid al-Aqṣā was established forty years after it. Beyond these two, neither the Qur’an nor the Sunna makes age the reason for setting out on a journey. The sanctity of places lies not in the age of their stones but in what God has singled them out for.
4. The Prophet’s Mosque in the Qur’an and the Sunna
The Prophet’s Mosque is not absent from the Qur’an, as the author supposes. God says: ﴿A mosque founded on piety from the first day is more worthy for you to stand in﴾ [al-Tawba 9:108]. In Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī reports that the Prophet ﷺ was asked about the mosque founded on piety; he took a handful of pebbles, struck the ground with them, and said: “It is this mosque of yours” — meaning the Mosque of Medina. This is precisely what the author calls for: a Sunna that clarifies and interprets the Qur’an.
The Qur’an calls Medina “the abode” which the Anṣār made their home together with faith: ﴿And those who settled in the abode and in faith before them﴾ [al-Ḥashr 59:9], and it makes coming to the Messenger ﷺ a door of repentance: ﴿Had they, when they wronged themselves, come to you and sought God’s forgiveness, and had the Messenger sought forgiveness for them, they would have found God Ever-Relenting, Most Merciful﴾ [al-Nisāʾ 4:64].
The Sunna is unanimous on the merit of the mosque and the city: “A prayer in this mosque of mine is better than a thousand prayers elsewhere, except the Sacred Mosque”; “What lies between my house and my pulpit is a garden from the gardens of Paradise”; “Faith will retreat to Medina as a snake retreats to its hole”; and the Prophet ﷺ prayed: “O God, make Medina beloved to us as You made Mecca beloved, or more” — all of them in al-Bukhārī and Muslim. The multiplication of the reward of prayer is the very reason that unites the three mosques in the hadith on setting out; the Prophet’s Mosque falls within that reason by explicit text.
As for the claim that hadiths are narrated by meaning and so suffer “muddles,” this is broadly true — but the remedy is to compare the chains of transmission, not to discard them. The hadith on setting out was narrated by Abū Hurayra, Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī, Abū Baṣra and others, and their narrations agree in mentioning the Prophet’s Mosque. Narration by meaning may alter a word; it does not lead several Companions to agree on inserting a mosque the Prophet ﷺ never mentioned and dropping one he did.
5. An Inverted Scale
The author holds that the Sunna “only explains and interprets the Qur’an,” yet he treats the most authentic hadith with suspicion while building his conclusion on statements of the Successors (tābiʿūn) that they did not attribute to the Prophet ﷺ, and on a piece of information from a website about the names of Mount Qāsiyūn. This inverts the very scale he proclaims: the views of Qatāda and Ibn Zayd are exegetical opinions that may be right or wrong, whereas the multiply-transmitted hadiths of the two Ṣaḥīḥs stand above them by the agreement of all hadith scholars.
The Qur’an itself does not confine the Sunna to explanation: ﴿Whatever the Messenger gives you, take it; and whatever he forbids you, refrain from it﴾ [al-Ḥashr 59:7], and ﴿Whoever obeys the Messenger has obeyed God﴾ [al-Nisāʾ 4:80]. And even if we grant the author that the Sunna’s role is explanation alone, as in the verse ﴿And We sent down to you the Reminder so that you may make clear to people what has been sent down to them﴾ [al-Naḥl 16:44], then the Prophet’s explanation that the verse of al-Tawba refers to his mosque, and his explanation that his mosque is among those to which one sets out, is exactly the explanation the author seeks. The structural unity of revelation, applied faithfully, affirms Medina rather than negating it.
6. Medina in the Hearts of the Gnostics
If something escaped the author, it is that the merit of the Prophet’s Mosque does not come from the age of its stones, but from the presence of the one to whom it belongs ﷺ. On this understanding jurists, hadith scholars and the people of the spiritual path have converged.
Al-Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ affirms in al-Shifā bi-Taʿrīf Ḥuqūq al-Muṣṭafā that visiting the Prophet’s grave ﷺ is an established practice of the Muslims, agreed upon and encouraged as a virtue, and he relates the consensus that the spot enclosing his blessed body is the most excellent place on earth. Imam al-Ghazālī, in Iḥyāʾ ʿUlūm al-Dīn, in the Book of the Secrets of Pilgrimage, devotes a section to visiting Medina and its etiquette, directing the visitor to hold in his heart the greatness of the one he is visiting, and to enter the city as one who stands before him ﷺ. Scholars also devoted entire works to the visit, among them Shifāʾ al-Siqām fī Ziyārat Khayr al-Anām by Taqī al-Dīn al-Subkī, al-Jawhar al-Munaẓẓam fī Ziyārat al-Qabr al-Sharīf al-Mukarram by Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī, and Wafāʾ al-Wafā bi-Akhbār Dār al-Muṣṭafā by al-Samhūdī. And it is well known of Mālik ibn Anas, the Imam of the Abode of Emigration, that he would not ride a mount within Medina, out of reverence for a land on which the Messenger of God ﷺ had walked.
The foundation on which the gnostics build this etiquette is the hadith narrated by Abū Dāwūd with a sound (ḥasan) chain: “No one sends greetings upon me but that God returns my soul to me so that I may return his greeting.” For them, the visit is not a pilgrimage to a relic of the past, but a standing before a living presence, and a greeting that is returned. Whoever understands the visit in this way finds Medina to be the qibla of the heart, just as Mecca is the qibla of the face.
In the Sudanese soul there is living testimony to this. The praise-poems (madīḥ) of Ḥāj al-Māḥī and the madīḥ poets who came after him overflow with longing for Ṭayba, for the Rawḍa and the Green Dome. Sudanese have inherited this longing generation after generation, and see the visit to Medina as the completion of the Hajj and the fulfilment of the journey.
Strikingly, the author links sanctity to the prophets: he gives precedence to the Umayyad Mosque for its connection to John, to al-Ṭūr for its connection to Moses, to al-Aqṣā for the prophets of the Children of Israel, and to the Sacred Mosque for Abraham and Ishmael, peace be upon them all. The criterion is sound in principle. But in linking sanctity to the prophets, he forgot their Seal and their master ﷺ, whose blessed body rests in Medina, and who is worthier of that criterion than any of those mentioned.
Conclusion: If Not Medina, Then Where؟
If the criterion for setting out is the text, then the very texts the author cites mention Medina. If the criterion is the Qur’an, then the Qur’an mentions the mosque founded on piety, and the Prophet ﷺ identified it as his own. If the criterion is antiquity, then the oldest houses are the Kaʿba and then al-Aqṣā, and the Umayyad Mosque is younger than the Prophet’s. If the criterion is association with the prophets, then Medina is the home and resting place of their Seal. By whatever scale we weigh it, Medina does not fall out of the three; rather, it lies at their heart.
I close by adding my “Amen” to the reminder with which Mr. Mohamed Al-Sadiq ended his article: urging the oppressed to pray against those who lit the fire of war in our country and drove people from their homes without right. Perhaps among the most hopeful places to raise that prayer is the noble Rawḍa, between the Prophet’s house ﷺ and his pulpit, where answer is hoped for. And God knows best.
Translations of Qur’anic verses and hadiths are the author’s renderings of their meanings.