the slips of scholars is something we have been forbidden to pursue, so he confined himself to rebutting the calumny for those who already knew it. In doing so he forestalled the circulation of material that would lead some people to base creed and legal rulings on dreams and unsound reports. Had those who exploited that footnote grasped this point and acted accordingly, it would have been far better for them.

Sixth: After the foregoing he said:

“Their statement implies that ‘Ḥanafi fiqh and the like’ is not part of our religion, nor is it taken from the Qur’an and Sunnah.”

I reply: This is merely a repetition of his earlier claim—“they have expelled it from the sphere of our Sharīʿah…”—and we have already exposed the falsehood and deception it contains, together with the correct view we hold concerning the schools of law and whether one may say, without qualification, that they constitute the Sharīʿah. There is no need to rehearse the discussion once again.

A question for Abū Ghuddah—will he answer?

I wish to ask this partisan who tries to fish in troubled waters: The purport of your words—and, according to the Ḥanafis, the implied meanings of texts are binding—is that the whole of Ḥanafi jurisprudence derives from the Book and the Sunnah. Do you affirm this? If you reply in the negative, you have joined me in my position, so what, then, do you fault me for?

But if you reply in the affirmative, you will have laid bare your own misguidance and self-contradiction.

The misguidance lies in the fact that the Ḥanafi school—like every other school—contains many issues that contradict the evidences of the Qur’an and Sunnah, as has already been demonstrated and corroborated by the words of Ibn Daqīq al-ʿĪd. If you nevertheless claim that these rulings come from the Book and the Sunnah, you are attributing disagreement, contradiction, and error to the Divine Law itself, whereas Allah, Exalted is He, says, “Had it been from other than Allah, they would surely have found much inconsistency in it.”