Answer to the one who asks: What is better for the one praying to say: O Allah, send blessings upon our master Muhammad, or O Allah, send blessings upon Muhammad?

The Shaykh : Today I was asked this question: Is it better that we say in the prayer, in the tashahhud: O Allah, send blessings upon our master Muhammad, or that we say: O Allah, send blessings upon Muhammad and the family of Muhammad, up to the end of the known prayers?
And what drives people to such a question—and it is a question of religious innovation, a question that never occurred to the righteous Salaf at all—is that the reason for it does not exist. There was no one among the Companions who thought that there was a guidance better and more excellent than the guidance of the Messenger (peace be upon him). Someone might say: No one says that even today. We say: No, there are people in their actual lives who say that there is something better than the guidance of the Messenger (peace be upon him), but they do not dare to utter it; because it is the clear, manifest misguidance... Why? Because if you say to one of them: My brother, do not do such and such. What is wrong with it? It is not what the Messenger (peace be upon him) did. Fine. Then he says to you: What is wrong with it? Fine, so... what the Messenger did. Either you prove that the Messenger did it, or you prove that the Messenger ordered it or encouraged it, or else retract your statement. Otherwise, the meaning of your statement is that your guidance is better than the guidance of the Messenger, and your guidance is better than the guidance of the Messenger, and this is disbelief itself. There was no one among the Salaf who said in the prayer: O Allah, send blessings upon our master; because they received the command from the Messenger (peace be upon him) in this form, and they do not contradict the command with their own philosophy... their own philosophy, unlike us today.
I always say, and I will always say, if the door were opened to adding such words to the desires of people, the Shari'ah would have changed and it would have suffered what the Shari'ah of the Torah and the Gospel suffered. But the people stopped—and this is from the favor of Allah upon us and upon them all—at certain words. Otherwise, if they had extrapolated, they would have gone completely outside the Shari'ah. When His saying (Blessed and Exalted is He) came down: ; they said: O Messenger of Allah, we have known this salam for you; so how do we send blessings upon you? He said: Say: up to the end of the known prayers. Can a scholar be imagined—the ignorant has nothing to do with this—can a scholar be imagined who hears this command directly from the Messenger saying to him: Say: O Allah, send blessings upon Muhammad, and then he, between himself and his Lord in the tashahhud, says: O Allah, send blessings upon our master Muhammad and the family of our master Muhammad, as You sent blessings upon our master Ibrahim and the family of our master Ibrahim, and so on? As for the Companions, as for the Tabi'un, as for those who followed them; we consider this impossible for them. As for the later generations, tell and there is no harm.
And I used to say that this leads some people to other additions, but they do not do them. For example, the tahiyat are for Allah; why do they not say: For Allah (Glorified and Exalted is He)? Allah is more worthy of glorification and magnification. Why does he not say: The tahiyat are for Allah (Mighty and Majestic)? Why does he not say: The tahiyat are for Allah, our master and our lord? He is the Lord in the original sense. I used to raise this issue to turn them back from that addition... our master. And then I noticed from some of the worshippers in our mosque that indeed one of them adds additions in the tashahhud that I have not heard in my life, because he has no constraints, he has no limits that the best guidance is the guidance of Muhammad and his teaching is complete and not limited. He does not have this idea. And it may be, as I feel, that he has some of the inherited fiqh study today, but in his life he has never heard anyone say to him: The best guidance is the guidance of Muhammad, meaning he hears, of course, this phrase, but he never notices that its meaning is: do not add to what came in the Sunnah, not even one letter. And I was pleased and I narrated this which I recently came across. I obtained a copy for the first time in my life in my last Hajj to the Holy House, a copy of the book "Mu'jam al-Tirmidhi al-Awsat," so I bent over its study, and I found in it benefits, some of which I did not find in any of the thousands of manuscripts I have read, big and small, of course. So I said to my companion: Listen to this text, for it has been forgotten and do not forget it. What is the text?
Al-Tirmidhi says with his authentic chain: From Abdullah ibn Mas'ud that he was in a gathering teaching one of the people the formula of the tashahhud that we all know today. When he came to his saying: I bear witness that there is no god but Allah and I bear witness that Muhammad is His slave and His Messenger; what did the student say? I bear witness that there is no god but Allah alone, having no partner. What did Ibn Mas'ud answer him? A very gentle style; we, as I told you on other occasions, are in need of learning these styles. He said: "Indeed, it is so, but we stop at what we were taught." I found another phrase—Glory be to Allah, they are all from one school—one of the students of Ibn Mas'ud heard a man adding another addition in the tashahhud, so he affirmed for him this meaning in the manner of Ibn Mas'ud, but he also said to him: "We stop at what we were taught." So we Muslims today are in need of this proper conduct to be truly submissive, truly Muslim to Allah, Lord of the worlds. So the teaching in the prayer was: "O Allah, send blessings upon Muhammad." Then those who add this word do not realize that this prayer contains no supplication to Allah that we want You to send blessings upon the Messenger as You sent blessings upon Ibrahim and bless him as You blessed Ibrahim; this equals the virtue that this person wants to include... if the expression is correct, the entry for this word in these Ibrahimic prayers; meaning this whole supplication is honor and lordship for the Messenger (peace be upon him), and a supplication for increase for him thereby; so why this word?
This is like, if the readers were to notice the Ibrahimic prayers, this is like another addition that people say today in response to the mu'adhdhin. After that they say: O Allah, Lord of this perfect call and the established prayer; grant Muhammad the intercession, the virtue, and the high rank. The high rank has no basis, and mentioning it here, given that it has no basis in the hadith, is a tautology. Why? Because it came in another hadith: . So when you say: Grant Muhammad the intercession and the virtue, what is it? It is the rank in Paradise, it is the high rank; so this is filler of words with no benefit, and it contradicts the text. Do not understand from me, of course, that if there were an addition of meaning and a good, beautiful meaning; that we would prefer it. Absolutely not, we do not prefer an addition to the teaching of the Messenger (peace be upon him); because there is nothing after the teaching of the Messenger (peace be upon him)...
And this is sufficient, and praise be to Allah, Lord of the worlds.