The foundational manual for issues in Hanafi fiqh is al-Hidayah fi Sharh Bidayat al-Mubtadi (Ali bin Abi Bakr al-Marghinani, d. 593 AH). This significant and weighty legal work comprises four large volumes. In Hanafi madrasas it is taught as a core text and treated as a primary source for legal questions. Al-Hidayah is, in fact, the author’s own commentary on his earlier work Bidayat al-Mubtadi.
As a source for Hanafi jurisprudence, books like al-Hidayah undoubtedly hold great importance. However, among the early scholars no human composition was ever granted the status that its memorization and recitation should be made obligatory like the Quran—yet one encounters hyperbolic notions of precisely this type, as in the following verses:
إن الہدایۃ کالقرآن قد نسخت
ما صنفوا قبلها في الشرع من كتب
فاحفظ قراءتها والزم تلاوتها
يسلم مقالک من زيغ ومن كذب
“Indeed al-Hidayah is like the Quran, for al-Hidayah too has abrogated all the books that were authored in the Shariah before it. So, O student, keep to the recitation of al-Hidayah and persist in its tilawah; if you do so, your speech will be safe from deviation and from falsehood.” (Z̧afar al-Muhassilin bi-Ahwal al- Musannifin, Maulana Muhammad Hanif Gangohi, p. 852)
After citing these lines, the transmitter further writes:
“This is not exaggeration, but an expression of reality. And these two verses appear twice as well in the commentary on al-Hidayah, Ashraf al-Hidayah.” (1/8, 23)
As sources of Hanafi fiqh, works like al-Hidayah are unquestionably valuable. Nevertheless, beyond the Book and the Sunnah, to designate anything else as a source of religion—or to declare it equivalent to the Quran and thereby make its memorization, recitation, and tilawah incumbent like the Quran—is an idea for which there is no warrant in the Book or the Sunnah. For all their importance, no human composition enjoys such a station.
Ideas so baseless are gravely harmful to the intellectual and spiritual formation of seekers of the Prophetic sciences. The result is that such students typically lose their interest in the Quran and in the Prophetic teachings: they come to regard the divine Word as a sacred religious book and the hadiths as a ledger of legal sources, yet in practice the Quran and Sunnah fail to inhabit their minds and hearts as the sources of guidance.
A Citation from Imam al-Shawkani
On precisely such mental rigidity and sectarian prejudice, Imam Muhammad Ali al-Shawkani (d. 1250 AH), commenting on the verse “اتَّخَذُوا أَحْبَارَهُمْ وَرُيْبَانَهُمْ أَرْبَابًا مِّنْ دُونِ اللَّهِ وَالْمَسِيحَ ابْنَ مَرْيَمَ” (Surah Tawbah, 9:31), writes to just effect:
In this verse there is a severe censure—grasped by any sound heart and any who lend an attentive ear—of blind imitation in the religion of God, and of preferring the statements of elders over the Mighty Book and the Purified Sunnah. Obedience to one’s school, to the words and practices of a given scholar of this ummah, when such obedience opposes the explicit texts and the established proofs of God (mighty and majestic), and what His books and His prophets proclaim—this is precisely like the Jews and Christians taking their rabbis and monks as lords apart from God. It is certain that they did not ‘worship’ them; rather, they obeyed them— declaring unlawful what they declared unlawful, and lawful what they declared lawful. Such is the conduct of the imitators in this ummah; it resembles that [conduct] as an egg resembles an egg, a date a date, and water as water.
O servants of God, O followers of Muhammad bin Abdullah: what is the matter with you that you have set aside the Book and the Sunnah, and fastened yourselves instead to men who, like you, were obliged to worship God by the light of those two and to act in accordance with what they indicate? You have acted upon the opinions they brought you—opinions not buttressed by the supports of truth nor reinforced by the pillars of religion—while the texts of the Book and the Sunnah call out in the clearest voice against such things. Yet you have lent them deaf ears, sealed hearts, sickly understandings… (Fath al-Qadir 2/353; see also Siddiq Hasan Khan, al-Din al-Khalis, p. 142)
His original Arabic words:
وفي هذه الآية ما يزجر من كان له قلب أو ألقى السمع وهو شهيد عن التقليد في دين الله، وتأثير ما يقوله الأسلاف على ما في الكتاب العزيز والسنة المطهرة، فإن طاعة المتمذهب لمن يقتدى بقوله ويستن بسنته من علماء هذه الأمة مع مخالفته لما جائت به النصوص، وقامت به حجج الله وبراہینہ، ونطقت به كتبه وأنبياؤه ، ہو کاتخاذ اليهود والنصارى للأحبار والريبان أربابًا من دون الله، للقطع بأنهم لم يعبدوهم بل أطاعوهم، وحرموا ما حرموا ، وحللوا ما حللوا ، وهذا هو صنيع المقلدين من هذه الأمة، وهو أشبہ بہ من شبه البيضة بالبيضة، والتمرة بالتمرة، والماء بالماء … فدعوا – أرشدكم الله وإياي كتبًا كتبها لكم الأموات من أسلافكم واستبدلوا بها كتاب الله … وقال: دعوا كل ذي قول بقول محمد فما آمن في دينه كمخاطر
An Incident from My Student Days
This occurred in 1996. I was studying al-Hidayah at the madrasah. I knew, God willing, that passing the Hidayah examination would not be difficult; so whenever I grew weary of purely technical disputation—apart from tafsir, hadith, and literature—I would go to the dormitory or the mosque and busy myself with supplication and recitation. Once, some classmates were sent from the Hidayah class to fetch me, wherever I might be. They found me reciting. “Come,” they said, “you’re being called to Hidayah.” Without fear, I replied on the spot: “Go tell them: guidance comes from the Quran, not from Hidayah; I am presently engaged in the Quran.”
This statement flashed through the madrasah like lightning. In the end, before several senior teachers and administrators, I was summoned to the office. Asked how I could say such a thing, I replied—with due respect— “If I may be spared, bring Hidayah Awwalin wa Akhirin.” At last the book was brought. After reading out the table of contents I said: “In this long table there is no Kitab al-Iman. Without faith, how can there be guidance?” For such insubordination, I was suspended. Later, through the intercession of a relative, Hakim Muhammad Irfan Qasimi al-Husayni (d. 2012), I was readmitted.
Technical Questions or Religious Realities?
If one aims to become a specialist in technical legalities, then the study of such books is necessary. But if one seeks deep knowledge of religious realities, these works not only cannot guide—if relied upon exclusively they produce a conception of religion built upon issues, where attention falls on the outward legal shell while the inward, meaning-bearing core is neglected; where the outward of religion is taught and its spirit is forgotten. Just as the human being is a union of body and spirit, so too religion is a union of outward and inward.
The reality of religion is ibadah (devoted worship), and its purpose is tazkiyah (purification)—a worshipful, humble bond with God and the cleansing of the outward and the inward. If the outward of religion is neglected, the result is what may be called Christianity; if the inward is neglected, that is what the Quran and the Prophet’s teachings label Judaism. Pure inwardism is Christianity, and mere ritualistic outwardness is Judaism. Hence the believers are sternly forbidden from following either tendency, and commanded instead to adhere to the hanif religion (al-Rum 30:30).
Islam (deenillah) is the balanced totality of outward and inward. It is neither mere spirituality nor mere formalism. Islam is not self-made, imam-centric sectarianism and its sources, nor the hyperbolic and harsh manifestations later propagated under various factional labels—manifestations often devoid of hikmah (wisdom) and samahah (forbearance), at odds with the spirit of the din al-fitrah (al-Rum 30:30).
All such manifestations stand against the original deen for the simple reason that they were innovated after the Messenger (PBUH); they do not enjoy the sanction of Prophetic Sunnah, Sirah, or Uswah. Their status can only be that of opinion and viewpoint—always subject to acceptance or rejection by any sincere student of the deen. For this reason the imams of fiqh and law, and the scholars and researchers, consistently called them merely opinions, open to deletion, revision, and critique: qala Abu Hanifah: ʿilmuna hadha ra’yi wa-huwa ahsanu ma qadarna ʿalayh, wa-man ja’ana bi-ahsana minhu qabilnahu minh. Wa ruwiya ʿanhu annahu qal: fa-inna bashar, naqulu al-qawla al-yawma wa-narjiʿu ʿanhu ghada.
Accordingly, views, ideas, movements, and sects that conflict with the Book and Sunnah and the axioms of reason and fitrah are not the religion—and it is not the believer’s task to present them as the religion of God. Religion is, and remains, only what is established from God and His Messenger—not any person’s thought or viewpoint.
Thus, the founding, sincere imams of prevalent movements and schools have publicly declared: if our words contradict the religion, do not accept them; throw them against the wall; and take your religion from where we ourselves strive to take it.
Consider a few related citations from the imams:
وقال الإمام أحمد رحمه الله: رأي الأوزاعي، ورأي مالك، ورأي أبي حنيفة، كله رأي، وهو عندي سواء. وإنما الحجة في الآثار
Ibn al-Qayyim writes in Ilam al-Muwaqqiʿin: the four imams forbade blind imitation of themselves and reproached those who took their statements without proof.
قال أبو حنيفة: هذا رأيي، فمن جاء برأي خير منہ قبلناه. وقال مالك: إنما أنا بشر أصيب وأخطيئ، فاعرضوا قولي على الكتاب والسنة. وقال الشافعي: إذا صح الحديث فاضربوا بقولي الحائط، وإذا رأيت الحجة موضوعة على الطريق فهي قولي. وقال الإمام أحمد : لا تقلدني ولا تقلد مالكاً، ولا الشافعي، ولا الثوري، وتعلم كما تعلمنا. وقال: لا تقلد في دینك الرجال، فإنهم لن يسلموا من أن يغلطوا
(Ilam al-Muwaqqiʿin 2/200)
A Comparison
To compare the Quran with any other religious book is like comparing a creature with its Creator. Still, to clarify the point—“Guidance comes from the Quran, not from anything else”—consider a simple contrast of styles between the Quran and fiqh manuals.
Both the Quran and the fiqh books have much to say about salah. But the difference is revealing. In the Quran, the essential components highlighted are khushu (humble attentiveness) and qunut (devout submissiveness), whereas in the fiqh books the situation is reversed: the inward components emphasized by the Quran are scarcely mentioned, while Sifat al-Salah focuses almost exclusively on outward elements—hadath, prayer times, and lists of faraiz (see al-Hidayah 1/40). There is, in these manuals, no dedicated chapter on khushu. By contrast, tomes are filled with the legal aspects of prayer—yet to abstract Shariah from its spirit and reality is not the method of the Quran and Sunnah.
When the Quran mentions salah, it teaches khushu at the outset (al-Muminun 23:1–2). The Messenger of God (PBUH) said: juilat qurrata ayni fi al-salah. (Musnad Ahmad, No. 14069), “The coolness of my eyes has been placed in prayer.” And he said: sallu kama raytumuni usalli. (Sahih al-Bukhari, no. 818): “Pray as you have seen me pray”—i.e., observing both outward and inward adab.
Thus, in the Quran and Sunnah, prayer is taught in a natural and integrative mode rather than a merely legal one. In practice, however, issues of salah have come to be treated as though they were identical with the reality of salah. The Prophet’s prayer is our eternal exemplar in both its outward and inward dimensions; we cannot take one and neglect the other. This difference in method—between Quran and Sunnah on one side and the manuals of “issues” on the other—is precisely what has rendered our worship a largely spiritless set of imitative rites: outward forms abound, while humble devotion and believing character have become rare.
“Fiqh of the Outward” and “Fiqh of the Inward”
The deen granted to humankind in the Quran and Sunnah embraces both outward and inward. Without introducing any such bifurcation or imbalance, it presents Kitab (law/Shariah) and Hikmah (the philosophy of religion, faith, and ethics) together and equally as the religion of God. Thus, in the Quran’s clarifications of marriage and divorce, sacrifice (al-Hajj 22:37), hajj and umrah, one repeatedly finds exhortations to taqwa and fine character (see al-Baqarah 2:197, 203, 223, 231, 233, 236, 241, etc.).
By reversing this divine pedagogical order, we were driven to a later historical division known as “fiqh al-zahir” and “fiqh al-batin.” This division is unnatural, for the religion of God, in its essence, admits of no such duality. It is outward and inward at once: faith and knowledge, taqwa and good character. None of its legal rulings is bereft of the light of “wisdom” and “devotion.”
Summary
It is time we map our lives by the light of the Book and the Sunnah; time we perform our worship and live our faith and ethics under Prophetic guidance.
We close with a couplet by Mirza Abd al-Qadir Bedil (d. 1720):
و ہدایہ نتوان یافت خدا را در کنز
* در صفحۂ دل ہیں کہ کتابے بہ ازیں نیست
You will not find God in Kanz[*] and Hidayah. Look to the pages of the heart[**]—no book is better than this!
[*] Kanz here alludes to a juristic compendium (e.g., Kanz al-Daqaʾiq).
[**] Pages of the heart = the purified inner self that receives guidance from the Revelation.