Those who argue for the existence of a “good innovation” have no evidence other than ʿUmar’s (may Allah be pleased with him) comment about the congregational night prayer in Ramadan (tarāwīḥ): “What an excellent innovation this is,” and their claim that certain things were introduced yet the early generations did not object to them—such as compiling the Quran in a single volume and writing down and collecting ḥadith.

The reply is that all of these matters rest upon clear foundations in the sacred law and are therefore not newly invented. When ʿUmar said, “What an excellent innovation,” he was speaking in the linguistic sense of the word, not the legal sense. Anything that can be traced back to a recognized legal basis may be called an “innovation” linguistically, but it is not an innovation in the Sharīʿah. In religious terminology an innovation is whatever lacks any foundation in the law at all.

Compiling the Quran in one book has such a foundation, for the Prophet ﷺ used to command that the Quran be written; the text was already recorded, though on scattered materials. The Companions (may Allah be pleased with them) therefore gathered it into a single muṣḥaf (codex) to preserve it.

As for tarāwīḥ, the Prophet ﷺ led his Companions in it for several nights and then refrained on the final night for fear that it might become obligatory. During his life and after his death the Companions continued to pray it individually or in small groups until ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb (may Allah be pleased with him) assembled them behind one imam, just as they had once stood behind the Prophet ﷺ. Hence this practice is not an innovation in the religion.

Writing down ḥadith likewise has a basis in the law. The Prophet ﷺ instructed certain Companions to record individual narrations when they requested it. The general reluctance to write hadith during his lifetime was only to prevent anything non-Quranic from being mixed with the Quran. After his passing, that concern no longer existed, for the Quran had been completed and precisely fixed before his death. The Muslims then documented the Sunnah to save it from loss. May Allah reward them with the best reward on behalf of Islam and the Muslims, for they safeguarded the Book of their Lord and the Sunnah of their Prophet ﷺ from disappearance and from the tampering of would-be corrupters.