Mālik held that the follower should give two taslīms, whereas the imam suffices with one. It is also reported from him that the follower pronounces three: one to exit the prayer, a second to respond to the imam, and a third to greet whoever is on his left.
As for Abū Ḥanīfah, he relied on the report transmitted by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Ziyād al-Ifrīqī, who said that ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Rāfiʿ and Bakr ibn Sawādah narrated to him from ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ that the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—said: “When a man sits in the final position of his prayer and then invalidates his ablution before pronouncing the taslīm, his prayer is still complete.”
Abū ʿUmar Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr observed: The earlier ḥadīth of ʿAlī is more sound in the estimation of the hadith scholars, for the report of ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAmr is transmitted solely through al-Ifrīqī, whom they deem weak.
The Qāḍī added: Even were its chain sound, the text itself is open to other readings, for it proves that one may not leave the prayer without taslīm only by the argument from silence (dalīl al-khiṭāb), a form of inference most scholars find tenuous. The majority, however, may reply that the restrictive definite article (al-) is stronger than that inference when one contends that what is left unmentioned must carry the opposite ruling of what is explicitly stated.
Ninth Issue: The jurists disagreed over the qunūt. Mālik considered the qunūt in the Fajr prayer recommended; al-Shāfiʿī deemed it a Sunnah; Abū Ḥanīfah held it impermissible in Fajr, restricting it to the Witr prayer. Others maintained that qunūt may be recited in every prayer; some limited it to Ramadan; some to the latter half of Ramadan; and others to its first half.
The cause of this divergence is the conflicting reports transmitted from the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—and the analogy by which some prayers are made to follow the ruling of others, that is, those in which he performed qunūt compared to those in which he did not.
Abū ʿUmar Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr said: The practice of invoking curses upon the unbelievers during the qunūt in Ramadan was widespread among the earliest generations, following the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—when he prayed against Ruʿal, Dhakwān, and the men who killed the Companions at Biʾr Maʿūnah.
Al-Layth ibn Saʿd said, “For forty—or forty-five—years I have never omitted the qunūt except behind an imam who omits it.” He went on: “I adopted this stance because of the ḥadīth that reached us stating that the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—performed qunūt for a month and forty days, supplicating for some people and against others, until Allah, blessed and exalted, revealed to him in admonishment: ‘You have no part in the matter—whether He turns toward them in mercy or punishes them, for they are wrongdoers’ (Āl ʿImrān 3:128). Thereupon the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—abandoned the qunūt and never returned to it until he met Allah.” He concluded, “Since that ḥadīth reached me I have not made qunūt, and this is also the view of Yaḥyā ibn Yaḥyā.”