they would surely have found much inconsistency in it.” Beyond that there is no misguidance more blatant.

The contradiction is this: you concede in your booklet Kalimāt (p. 44) that “every school of law contains anomalous subsidiary rulings that are not put into practice.” How, then, can anyone claim that the whole of Ḥanafī jurisprudence is part of our revealed law when it includes such anomalies that are not acted upon? Who could utter something like this except a simpleton who does not know what slips from his tongue? And he is not satisfied with this folly—he adds another by censuring those who deny that everything in Ḥanafī fiqh forms part of Islamic law!

I say this fully expecting that a dullard of this sort⦗1⦘ can keep two mutually exclusive ideas in his head at once. At one moment he speaks the truth—admitting, for example, that the Ḥanafī school contains anomalous rulings that are not observed—and at another he parrots the major deviation that says “every mujtahid is correct,” that the various schools, despite their wide differences, are like multiple divine laws, and that a Muslim incurs no blame for taking from any of them whatever he wishes and leaving whatever he wishes, since all of it is sharīʿah⦗2⦘.

For instance, he comments on the words of Shaykh al-Qārī in Fatḥ Bāb al-ʿInāyah (1/261):

“One may pray in a garment whose lining is impure according to Muḥammad, whereas Abū Yūsuf says this is impermissible.”

He then quotes Ibn ʿĀbidīn’s marginal note, which states: “The apparent sense of al-Badāʾiʿ prefers Muḥammad’s view, and it is the more fitting; while the Ḥāshiyah prefers the opinion of Abū Yūsuf.” Abū Ghuddah comments:

“Both opinions have been preferred; it is permissible to act upon either of them.”

Does this not show that Abū Ghuddah believes the various opinions