the Sunnah even when it ran counter to the madhhab. Yet obstacles—well known to scholars—kept the reports of their practice from reaching us, or prevented them from displaying it in front of their fanatical followers. Shaykh Salih al-Himsi, a Hanafi scholar, considered this raising of the hands to be Sunnah, but refrained from doing it himself for fear of the partisans, as he once confided to me. Additional evidence for this view is that in the eighth century A.H. some Hanafi imams used to raise their hands at every takbir while leading the prayer. The summary of a fatwa by Shaykh al-Islam (2/375–380) states: A Hanafi man prayed in congregation and raised his hands at every takbir. The jurist present objected, saying, “This is impermissible in your madhhab; you are an innovator and a vacillator (mudhabdhab): you have followed neither your imam nor your school. Does this diminish your prayer and constitute opposition to the Sunnah and to your Imam, or not?” Shaykh al-Islam—after affirming that raising the hands at the bowing and on rising from it is Sunnah, while denying that it is Sunnah at every single takbir (a view in which his pupil Ibn al-Qayyim followed him; their error will be discussed later, God willing)—replied: “If a person follows Abu Hanifah, Malik, al-Shafi‘i or Ahmad, yet in a particular issue sees that another imam’s view is stronger and therefore adopts it, he has acted correctly. This in no way undermines his religion or his reliability—there is no disagreement about that. In fact, such a person is closer to the truth and more beloved to Allah and His Messenger than someone who shows partisanship to a specific scholar other than the Prophet, peace be upon him, insisting that the scholar’s opinion alone must be followed and rejecting the view of any imam who differs with him. Whoever behaves in this way is ignorant and astray, and may even be a disbeliever; for to believe that the general public are obliged to imitate a particular individual is not something any Muslim says. One who is loyal to all the imams, loves them, and imitates whichever of them he deems to accord with the Sunnah, is acting commendably—indeed, he is in a better state than others—and such a person is not to be labelled ‘vacillating’ (mudhabdhab) in a pejorative sense; rather,”