The answer is that this is a patently feeble claim—indeed, a misgiving so insubstantial that repeating it is scarcely worth the effort, no different from the last objection.

One may only act upon unrestricted texts in an unrestricted manner when the Lawgiver has left them without qualification. Once the Lawgiver attaches a limitation to an otherwise general ruling, it becomes obligatory to abide by that limitation and not content oneself with the bare wording. Our present issue—Tarawih prayer—is therefore not an open-ended supererogatory act; it is a prayer whose form and number have been expressly defined by the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, as demonstrated at the start of this chapter. To set that restriction aside under the pretext of relying on general texts is impermissible.

Anyone who does so is like a person who consciously performs a prayer at odds with the Prophet’s ﷺ practice—authentically transmitted to us—altering both its form and its quantity while ignoring his ﷺ instruction, “Pray as you have seen me pray.” Such a person may invoke the same general proofs to justify, for example, performing Dhuhr as five rakʿahs, offering the pre-Fajr Sunnah as four, or inserting two bowings (rukuʿs) or extra prostrations into a single rakʿah. The invalidity of this is self-evident to any rational mind.

For that reason, the eminent scholar Shaykh ʿAlī Maḥfūẓ wrote in his book al-Ibdāʿ (p. 25), after citing texts from the scholars of the four schools, that whatever the Prophet ﷺ deliberately left undone despite the presence of a motive for doing it—his omission itself constitutes the Sunnah, and doing it amounts to a blameworthy innovation. He said: ⦗37⦘