—contradictory though they are, and they are numerous in his school—are all divine law, so that one may act on whichever of them he wishes?

Someone might object, “Perhaps he limits this license to the disagreements that exist only inside the Ḥanafī school.” I reply: Absolutely not. I have seen him give preference to the position of Imām Mālik, which allows a menstruating or postpartum woman to recite the Qur’an and to touch the muṣḥaf (the physical copy of the Qur’an) for the sake of learning and teaching, and which allows a person in a state of janābah (major ritual impurity) to recite whatever is meant for seeking refuge—such as the Throne Verse, Sūrah al-Ikhlāṣ, and the two closing sūrahs—when afraid or about to sleep. He expressly rules all of this permissible in open contradiction to his own Ḥanafī school, which does not permit any of it.

He concludes by saying:
“In this we see the graciousness and breadth of Islam, for it makes it easy to keep up the prescribed litanies that the believer is to recite before sleeping, even if he is in janābah, or she is menstruating or in postpartum bleeding.” (1)

I respond: Yet your Ḥanafī school—the very school through which you worship Allah—contains the opposite of the leniency and facilitation you have just praised; and you yourself admit (p. 40) that it is nothing other than the Islamic law derived from the Book and the Sunnah. Do you, then, imagine that Islam is two religions, one gentle and the other harsh? Reflect on this, O people of insight.

Now, after this clarification and before moving on to refute him in