Can I leave out Sunnah during Prayers?
I thought I should add here that I recently read a Hadeeth that touched me so much, and one I felt that applied a great deal to me, my life, my condition, my situation, that I´ve added the Sunnah Prayers as well to my routine, inasmuch even the four Sunnah Rakaat before Salaat-al-Asr stimetimes, which the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) used to skip some days and some days he would offered them. As an extension to it, I now often extend my Witr Prayer to three Rakaat from the earlier routine of offering just a single Rakah of it. Anyway, the Hadeeth that I´m referring to is the one below:
".... The first of his deeds for which a person will be brought to account on the Day of Resurrection will be his prayer. If it is sound then he will have succeeded but if it is not sound then he will be lost and doomed. If anything is lacking from his obligatory prayers, the Lord will say: "Look and see whether My slave has any voluntary (prayers)," and the shortfall from his obligatory prayers will be made up from that. Then all his deeds will be dealt with in like manner" - Sunaan Abu Dawood, Hadeeth #863.
I don´t necessarily fear about the mistakes made whilst offering the Obligatory Prayers, as God is the Most Merciful for a reasons and He recognises a person´s efforts, as long as the latter is pure and true in intentions and performs all his obligatory acts with all his heart and soul, because, as it is, mistakes made in forgetfulness etc. are those which even the Prophet himself made once (for which he then proceeded to offer two prostrations of forgetfulness/mistake). For us, even if we read the translations of it a thousand times, Arabic is not our native language and hence to make mistakes or to wander in concentration is most natural, but our intentions should be pure that we keep trying to stay focused and remind ourselves that we are standing in front of our Lord.
However, regardless of whether how valid or sound my excuse is, it is a fact that there are some obligatory acts of worship that I´m unable to perform, and hence with a sense of blame and guilt I find my guidance in the above Hadeeth and try my best to make up for them through offering the Supererogatory Prayers.
But the fact remains, the Prophet has throughout his life only recommended the Sunnah and the Nawaafil Prayers and has nowhere mentioned of him who misses them as having sinned. So it should be up to the individual to judge for himself, and it should never be forced upon people and we should confine it to just recommending them and not look down on someone who comes back to a gathering or the living room having only offered the Obligatory Prayers. As someone put it so well above, why are the Supererogatory Fasts not looked at in the same way as the Supererogatory Prayers? Is it so, because it is not a prevailing practice amongst the Muslims of today and hence missing them makes no sin? Islamic practices aren´t time-bound or dependent on the prevailing practice or culture. If something is obligatory, it is obligatory till forever. It is well documented that the Prophet very regularly used to observe the Supererogatory Fasts of the months Muharram, Shawaal and Shabaan, and the days of Ashoorah and Araafah.
