Building a Mosque on Someone’s Land Seized Unlawfully

Question

The people of a village unlawfully seized a piece of land, fought a lawsuit over it and won the case, and built a mosque on it, although an old mosque already exists there, and that one too does not fill up with worshippers. Will this mosque be a mosque in the Sharʿi sense, and will prayer performed in such a mosque be valid? And what is the ruling concerning the one who fought the lawsuit?

Answer

Unlawfully seizing some land, obtaining it by fighting a false lawsuit, and building a mosque on it is not correct according to the Shariʿa. This is no work of religion — it is oppression (zulm), all the more so since an old mosque already exists there; when that one does not fill up with worshippers, what need is there to build a second mosque?

Source: Fatawa Mahmudiyya

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