Pray only fard rakaat

Question

I have a doubt, can we pray only fard avoiding sunnah rakaat? After visiting several web pages I didn't find one solid answer to my question. I'm not saying that sunnah rakaats are useless but can we avoid them without committing sin?

Answer 1

Sunnah prayers are those which Prophet (SAW) used to do that, in addition to Fard prayers. Of course they are not obligatory, but the Prophet (SAW) used to do it. Why don't you want to do something which our Prophet (SAW) had done.

You can leave Sunnah prayers when the Fard prayers are about to get Qada (i.e., their time is about to finish). In such case, you should offer Fard prayers before they are Qada.

At a job, would you just meet the bare minimum or work harder to get extra rewards?

Answer 2

First of all unless you are Hanafi (who define the fajr sunnah as wajib, which as technical term in other school of fiqh is a synonym of fard, but for hanafis it seems to be less than fard and higher than sunnah muakkadah) you will have five fard/farz= obligatory prayers to pray daily and anything else would be sunnah/nafl: That means it's a voluntary prayer to gain thawab (reward), but if you did not perform it you won't be a sinner. You only will have missed a good deed which may have helped you to mend mistakes you did in the fard/farz prayers. See also this hadith qudsi about the importance of nafl prayers!

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A fiqh intermezzo

AFAIK the hanafi school considers the sunnah of sobh/fajr prayer as a fard/farz like and calls it "wajib", maybe because of this hadith.
The Maliki school calls this prayer raghiba رغيبة this means something the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) has intensively asked people to do!
They also add as sunan mu-akada the shaf'a (sets of two rak'a's) and witr prayer: So the minimum of nafl could be fajr prayer before the fard and the shaf'a and witr prayer!
So any fiqh school wouldn't reject it if you prayed only the fard/farz prayers, as for the case of wajib prayers (as defined) in case of omission you would be considered a sinner they also should be performed as they would be mandatory. But all of them would strongly recommend you to do some nafl prayers to gain rewards and mend your farz/fard prayers!

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On the other hand the Prophet (peace be upon him) was asked a similar question as you may find in Sahih Muslim (another Version), where the Inquirer also asked about only fasting Ramadan etc.

And Allah knows best!