It is recommended not to practice these two rakʿahs continually, for fear that people might assume they are a regular sunnah and thereby give them the ruling of the confirmed rawātib—meaning a practice that one must never omit. The disapproval, then, is not of performing the two units themselves; a single act cannot at once be recommended and disliked. Rather, what is disliked is turning them into a permanent routine and treating them as an established sunnah. The scholars differentiate between an act that is designated and maintained as a regular sunnah, and an occasional practice performed in certain circumstances; the latter does not carry the ruling of a confirmed sunnah that should never be neglected.

Performing these two rakʿahs does not delay the obligatory Maghrib prayer from its initial time. Al-Nawawī said that the claim, “doing them postpones Maghrib past its first time,” is a baseless fancy, contrary to the Sunnah. Besides, they take only a brief moment and do not push the prayer beyond its earliest time.

The legitimacy of these two rakʿahs is established through all three modes of the Sunnah. The Prophet ﷺ commanded them when he said, “Pray before Maghrib,” he himself performed them, as in the narration of Ibn Ḥibbān, and he saw the Companions praying them and expressed his approval.

Ibn al-Qayyim (d. 751 AH) noted that it is proven the Prophet was constant throughout the day and night in forty rakʿahs: seventeen obligatory rakʿahs, twelve regular rawātib mentioned in the ḥadith of Umm Ḥabībah, and eleven for the night prayer, making a total of forty rakʿahs.

Shaykh al-Islam [Ibn Taymiyyah] said: What is not a regular sunnah should not be treated as one, nor does it merit uninterrupted observance, lest it come to resemble the confirmed rawātib. Thus, whoever wishes to pray voluntarily before ʿAṣr, Maghrib, or ʿIshāʾ may do so, and that is good—but one must not regard it as a regular sunnah.