There is no doubt that these innovated supplications have regrettable consequences and harmful effects upon a Muslim’s creed and acts of worship. These effects are too numerous to enumerate, but Shaykh Jīlān ibn Khidr al-Arūsī succinctly summarized them in his valuable book, “Supplication and Its Place in Islamic Creed”1, under the following points:

First: Innovated supplications do not fulfill the intended purposes of worship: refining souls, purifying them of foolish impulses, drawing them nearer to their Creator, and attaching them to their Lord in hope, longing, and fear. They neither heal the sick, quench the thirsty, nor guide to a path.

Prescribed supplications, by contrast, are the effective remedy and healing balm for spiritual ailments, diseases of the heart, and satanic desires. Whoever replaces them with innovated supplications has exchanged what is better for what is inferior.

Second: Innovated supplications deprive a servant of the tremendous reward and abundant recompense attained by one who adheres to the transmitted supplications, observes them consistently, and practices them as they were transmitted. Such a person gains precedence and opens himself to the Lord’s outpourings and generosity. By contrast, one who invokes Allah with innovated supplications deprives himself of reward and recompense and exposes himself to Allah’s wrath and anger.

Third: Innovated supplications go unanswered, even though a supplicant’s principal aim is usually to have his request granted, obtain what he desires, and avert what he fears. As for innovated supplications,