Question:
What is the legal ruling
for the Tarāwīḥ prayer?
Answer (from Sheikh Muḥammad Saʿīd Ramaḍān Al-Būṭī):
Aḥmad, Ibn Ḥibbān and
Al-Ḥākim have related, and the latter declared it authentic (ṣaḥīḥ),
from the ḥadīth of Abū Dharr, that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him
and grant him peace, said, “Prayer is the best of matters, so whoever is
able to do a great deal of it let him do a great deal.”[1]
This clearly means
that whenever a Muslim does a lot of supererogatory (nāfilah) prayers he
gets more reward for doing so, and the Tarāwīḥ prayer is supererogatory.
Therefore, whoever forbids someone praying from doing more than eight or ten or
twenty [rakʿa] has gone against the speech of the Messenger of Allah.
Indeed, he has declared it mistaken!
Indeed the debate
that gets worse and worse in some masājid, regarding this issue, only exists
for the sake of exalting one’s ego and defending one’s position, and whoever
has devoted his attention to seeking Allah’s pleasure will never delve into
this debate in the slightest. Let the person praying know that he is in charge
of himself, and thus, if he wants to pray Tarāwīḥ as four, or eight, or twenty
or more…then it is supererogatory, and the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless
him and grant him peace, has said, “Prayer is the best of matters, so whoever is able to do a great deal of
it let him do a great deal.”
[Translated from Maʿ Al-Nās: Mashūrāt wa
Fatāwā (Damascus: Dār Al-Fikr, 1423/2002),
v. 1, p. 37]
No comments:
Post a Comment