Giving Half of a Mosque for the Widening of a Road

Question

Here in the bazaar a mosque has been built right on the roadside. The municipal government here wants to widen this road, as a result of which half of the mosque will go into the road and half will remain. A local merchant has also advised: “On the north side of the mosque is our land. Give to the road as much of the mosque’s land as is going, and I will give the same amount of land on the north side; extend the mosque towards the north.

Answer

A place that has once been made a mosque in the Sharʿi sense has become a mosque forever: selling it, exchanging it, making it into any other house, shop, madrasa, travellers’ lodge and the like, cultivating there or burying the dead there is absolutely impermissible.

Source: Fatawa Mahmudiyya

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