what establishing taraweeh indicates about UMAR( R.A)

[Ibn Taymiyya]

This prayer was not called “Tarweeh” at the time, it was later labeled by this name by Muslims and it became popular for it.

The second Caliph of Islam, al-Farooq `Umar bin al-Khattab is accused by a group of deviants (the Shia) of having invented this horrible practice.

`Umar may Allah be pleased with him is viewed by Shiites as an evil man whose main purpose is to break the pillars of Islam, weaken the faith and erase the true teachings of religion.

However, `Umar is also viewed as a noble and pious believer with great achievements by the vast majority of Muslims throughout the ages, so how does that make sense? Well, Shiites explain that `Umar only presented outward Islam but internally was a selfish-hypocrite.

The first issue we tackle in this article is this accusation of hypocrisy. We Ahlul-Sunnah argue: what sense does it make for this evil and selfish person, to go out of his way and encourage people to pray extra during the month of Ramadan?

From what I understood, based on the Qur’an and the prophetic-teachings, a hypocrite is primarily a person who dislikes worshiping God and avoids it at all costs.

{Indeed, the hypocrites [think to] deceive Allah, but He is deceiving them. And when they stand for prayer, they stand lazily} [4:142]

If `Umar detested prayer and wished to enjoy his time, why force himself to stand up for long hours at night for Taraweeh? Why invent Taraweeh and inconvenience himself with such annoyance?

{The hypocrite men and hypocrite women are of one another. They enjoin what is wrong and forbid what is right} [9:67]

And here we ask, is encouraging people to pray during the nights of Ramadan right or wrong? Was `Umar enjoining what’s wrong by advising them to pray more?

قال النبي: أثقل الصلاة على المنافقين صلاة العشاء وصلاة الفجر ولو يعلمون ما فيهما لأتوهما ولو حبوا

[Aba Hurayrah reported: The Prophet (saw) said: “The most difficult prayers for hypocrites are the `Isha’ and Fajr prayers. If only they knew the virtues of these two they would have crawled to attend them.” (Sahih al-Bukhari)]

In the above prophetic-narration, we see that two prayers are much more annoying for hypocrites than others, `Isha’ and Fajr. Why is this? Because one of them is at night after a long tiring day of work while the other is early at dawn when people are sleepy, this is why hypocrites often skip them.

Yet, we notice that the prayer that `Umar upheld was AFTER `Isha’. Wouldn’t a hypocrite like to skip these long night prayers and rest at home? In fact, `Umar was assassinated while leading people during Fajr prayer.

From the above, we conclude that the Shia are not reasonable in their claim that `Umar bin al-Khattab was an evil-hypocrite who wished to corrupt the religion.