The Shaykh’s discussion of the issue of dividing religious innovations into good and bad.

The Shaykh : So we say that the one who claims that the issue of religious innovation is a matter of scholarly disagreement: who are the true jurists who said that religious innovation is divided into good innovation and bad innovation? This is the first point, as a general rule. The other point is that we demand they provide some examples of what those imams considered good and innovated, the imams whom they claim to adhere to. If we were to ask the scholars of taqlid (following a scholar without knowing his evidence) today to produce texts regarding good innovations, they would fill books and volumes with statistics, many and very many. So we say to them: produce just ten innovations from one of the imams of the Muslims to whom you belong, and say, "This is a good innovation" and "This is a good innovation," with no evidence for it in the Book and the Sunnah. This is a detail we have mentioned repeatedly: not everything that occurs, merely by its occurrence and happening after the Messenger, is a bid'ah (religious innovation). Rather, the condition is that there be no evidence for it in the Book and the Sunnah. From this, the later scholars err in their view that divides bid'ah into five categories. They say, "Obligatory innovation," giving as an example the compilation of the Qur'an. I seek refuge in Allah; the compilation of the Qur'an is an innovation? Why do they say this? Because the compilation occurred after the Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him). The formal compilation in a specific manner occurred after the Messenger. If we say that printing did not exist in the time of the Messenger, we do not call it an innovation. This has a separate section and chapter in the principles of jurisprudence, known as the chapter of maslahah mursalah (unrestricted public interest).
They say the compilation of the Qur'an is an innovation. They say 'Umar ibn al-Khattab gathering the Companions for tarawih is an innovation. And they say—and I say this with reservation—that 'Umar ibn al-Khattab expelling the Jews from Khaybar is an innovation, even though there are explicit texts regarding these matters. We have spoken about tarawih repeatedly and over and over. The Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him) established it by his action and encouraged it by his word, saying: . And yet it is said that gathering people for tarawih is an innovation. Either they are ignorant of these sunnahs and call them by a name other than their own, which is not far from those who are distant from understanding the Book and the Sunnah, or—and this is the best of the two assumptions about them—they are using the term figuratively, as occurred with some of the Salaf. 'Umar ibn al-Khattab, for example, called tarawih an innovation when he said, "What a good innovation this is," and he did not mean the innovation that the later scholars defined as innovation in religion, which is inventing a form of worship without a precedent from his (peace and blessings be upon him) action or his word.