—may Allah be pleased with him—so when that measure was carried out after the Prophet’s death it could, in linguistic terms, be called a bidʿah, because it was an act brought into existence anew. In the same way, the very religion that the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, conveyed is, in ordinary Arabic, described as a bidʿah and a muḥdath, just as the envoys of Quraysh said to the Negus about the Prophet’s Companions who had migrated to Abyssinia: “These people have forsaken the faith of their forefathers, have not entered the religion of the king, and have come with a novel religion unknown to us.”

Nevertheless, an act that is supported by the Qur’an and the Sunnah is not a bidʿah in the legal sense even though it may be labelled a bidʿah in the linguistic sense; the breadth of the term in language is wider than its scope in the Sacred Law. It is thus understood that the Prophet’s statement, “Every bidʿah is misguidance,” was not meant to include every newly initiated act—for the religion of Islam itself, indeed every religion with which the messengers were sent, is a new act. What he intended was the innovations consisting of practices he, peace and blessings be upon him, did not prescribe.

Given this, during the Prophet’s lifetime people used to perform the night prayer of Ramadan both in congregation and individually, and on the third night he said to them,