What is the ruling on the imam performing some of the abandoned sunnahs, if doing so leads to confusion and bad suspicion?
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Question:
Honorable Shaykh, may Allah grant you success, he says: There are some sunnahs in the prayer that have been abandoned, and if the imam were to perform them, it might cause confusion and aversion among the people praying behind him. So, are these sunnahs to be performed?
Answer:
I mentioned to you that if the sunnah is not obligatory, meaning the recommended sunnah that is not obligatory, and performing it leads to confusion among the people and bad suspicion, then it is not performed; it is avoided to ward off fitnah (trial, discord or temptation). Some of the young people and some of the pretentious scholars want to display everything that has been said, and the people are not accustomed to this, so fitnah (trial, discord or temptation) occurs, and harm occurs. Yes.
Honorable Shaykh, may Allah grant you success, he says: There are some sunnahs in the prayer that have been abandoned, and if the imam were to perform them, it might cause confusion and aversion among the people praying behind him. So, are these sunnahs to be performed?
Answer:
I mentioned to you that if the sunnah is not obligatory, meaning the recommended sunnah that is not obligatory, and performing it leads to confusion among the people and bad suspicion, then it is not performed; it is avoided to ward off fitnah (trial, discord or temptation). Some of the young people and some of the pretentious scholars want to display everything that has been said, and the people are not accustomed to this, so fitnah (trial, discord or temptation) occurs, and harm occurs. Yes.
Source
قناة «العلامة الدكتور صالح الفوزان»، [353 -582] ما حكم إقامة الإمام لبعض السنن المهجورة، وإن أدى ذلك إلى التشويش وسوء الظن؟ — youtube.com
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.
