kr’s note: The following is the result of class and discussion with Shaykh Amin yesterday, so most of the insights–well, all of them, who am I kidding–are to his credit. We were reading from kitab al-hajj in Hidayah, a section detailing the step-by-step rites of Hajj, when the following discussion took place.
The Hanafis were given the title “ahl ‘l-ra’i”, the people of opinion and conjecture, and this title was often used with a sense of sarcasm by some of the other schools for they often sought to bring in logic and reason in determining the Law. Abu Hanifah (may Allah have mercy on him) was called “al-Qayyas” (an ism mubalaghah form), meaning “one who constantly and exceedingly uses analogical reasoning.” What these same people overlooked, of course, is that Abu Hanifah and his students were concerned primarily with the nass (text) as foundational evidence, and logic as a secondary and supplemental source at best. The authority of the nass was always paramount, and when rulings deviated from the nass, another nass had to exist along with clear and logical reasoning to allow for such movement away from the hukm (mandated Law).
The above is necessary background in order to understand the Hanafi position–and the subsequent revelation–when it comes to the Day of Arafat, specifically looking at the order and manner in which the prayers are to be performed. It is well known that the pilgrims are to combine the Zuhr and Asr prayers at the time of Zuhr, but the Hanafis say that combining prayers is not allowed (unless of course one makes jama` suwari, which is a discussion for another day, but basically means delaying Zuhr until the end of its time and then praying Asr right as its time comes in). But, on the Day of Arafat, the Hanafis allow for combining these prayers, yet the nass would indicate that this should not be allowed, specifically due to two verses: 4:103 which explicitly states that prayer has prescribed times, and 2:238 which further says to especially guard the middle prayer (which the dominant opinion says refers to the Asr prayer). Obviously, one can explain why these prayers are combined because the Prophet (salallahu `alayhi wa sallam) did so when he performed Hajj, and he only did Hajj once in his lifetime, so there is a nass allows for this exception. But reason is necessary to stipulate how and why the nass can be over-ridden, so the Hanafis say that certain conditions have to be met (such as one being in Ihram, one being in Arafat, etc) in order to move away from the nass.
This is where it gets interesting… because the idea here is that once these conditions are met, the principle of preserving “time” is also maintained because these conditions essentially bring the time of Asr “forward”, relatively, to those who are in Arafat, so they maintain the first nass as well. In other words, their Asr prayer, which the `aql (intellect) may say is before its time and thus not “prescribed” yet (as per the nass), is actually prescribed because the time is brought forward.
Then it gets even juicier… because when sunset happens, one is not allowed to pray Maghrib in Arafat, one has to wait until he reaches Muzdalifah, then he prays Maghrib and Isha together… yet this Maghrib is not considered to be qadah, even if the time for Maghrib has elapsed (even going by the liberal Hanafi 90 minute Maghrib rule) by the time he reaches Muzdalifah. So this presents a conundrum, because in the previous example, we brought the time forward, yet now we are essentially pushing the “time” back, saying that the time for one’s Maghrib–despite one’s `aql observing the sun set–hasn’t started. To understand this, one looks at the hadith (which is in both Bukhari and Muslim by the way, even Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani (may Allah have mercy on him), a card carrying member of Shafi’i madhab, agrees in his Dirayah commentary), wherein the Prophet (salallahu `alayhi wa sallam) says to Jabir (may Allah be pleased with him), when the latter was about to pray Maghrib in the road while en route from Arafat to Muzdalifah, “As-salātu amāmak, ” (The prayer is in front of you), which is interpreted that as-salatu actually stands for “waqtu ‘l-salāti amāmak” (the time of the prayer is in front of you). In other words, the Prophet said that the time for Maghrib, even though outwardly it may have seemed it was dark, would not start for them until they physically reached Muzadalifah. Even more amazing is that this “start” time is relative for each pilgrim, only occuring when he/she physically enters Muzdalifah.
This hadith is fascinating because it establishes a link between time and space. Einstein became famous for saying that time was so powerful that it could physically curve and alter the very fabric of space. Here, we are saying that the blessed plain of `Arafat is so powerful that it is not only unaltered by time, but instead, this space physically curves and bends time… and it is so powerful that it pushes time in both directions, bringing the time for one prayer forward, and delaying the time for the other. Thus, the famous hadith of “Al-hajju `arafah” (The Hajj is Arafat), no longer remains majazi (allegorical), but takes on a higher degree of haqiqah (outwardly literal) meaning, because of the power contained in this blessed plain.
For the pilgrim, the paradox is to use his `aql to understand and appreciate this reasoning, and then to simultaneously understand the weakness of his `aql that tells him it is time or not time to pray–to embrace the power of the `aql on one hand, while understanding its shortcomings on the other. This is the true test of the pilgrim, to appreciate that his Divinely-given `aql is useful for certain things, but completely useless for others, and instead he has to have faith in Divine Providence in such matters. This complete submission is the spirit of Hajj that is started with the chants of labbayk that declares, “Here I am O Lord at Thy service”, wherein the pilgrim realizes that he is nothing, and God is everything.
It is for this reason that the same Hanafis differ with their Maliki brethren; the latter say that the talbiyah (chanting of labbayk) is to be stopped after the day of Arafat, but the Hanafis (and even the Shafi’is here) say that one is to continue this chant until the stoning of the devils. In the context of the above, wherein one has to abandon one’s notion of time and accept Divine Time, it serves as a perfect reason to continue this chant, because the only way one can appreciate this travel through this space-time continuum that happens on this day is to be in complete submission to the One who is above time itself.
Einstein ain’t got nothin’ on Abu Hanifah.

A Rambling Diatribe of Inauguration Ruminations
Published January 22, 2009 Social Commentary 7 Commentskr’s note: as the title suggests, this isn’t a structured or perhaps even grammatically correct post that you may be normally accustomed to reading from yours truly… but rather, it’s a stream-of-consciousness amalgamation of thoughts that I needed to jot down before I lost them.
“Na`am nahnu nastati`u”
Whenever I listen to Obama’s speeches (or to be precise, the 27 year old dude who writes them at Starbucks… how’s that for symbollism) and the power contained therein, and it always brings to mind the famous Prophetic hadith: Inna min’al-bayaani la-sihrah (Indeed in eloquent speech there is magic)… it sounds great on paper, but I’m not sold until I see something positive happen (OK, so Bush flying away in the helicopter was pretty positive). Yesterday was a uniquely historic day, but it was not the day of fath-e-Makkah repeated either, as some Muslims were making it out to be (it was much warmer on the day of fath-e-Makkah). I’m not expecting drastic changes in areas like foreign policy (the zionist lobby is too powerful, so anyone expecting things to “change” in the Middle East is at best naive), but I do expect changes in economy, healthcare (esp as a doctor with malpractice), environment, etc. may happen in the next several year. As I mentioned in a previous post, politics is the epitome of all that is secular, and it surprises me that Muslims always have to view politics with the religiously rose-colored glasses to analyze everything… that to me is the peak of irony, because politics never claimed itself to anything but secular, and yet we conflate our religious goals and values into it, and cry foul when politics and religion don’t rhyme (kinda like that poem yesterday), which they were never really meant to do anyway. I was amazed at how many Muslims were all rah rah rah about the inauguration (wow, 2 million people yesterday, was that the American hajj with black wool topcoats being the new ihram?), acting like either Obama (aka Hussain Bhai) was the Mahdi or the Dajjal, depending on who you spoke to… instead of just appreciating the history quietly (and also the boo-birds ripping mercilessly into Bush), and not allowing ourselves to be suckered into buying the hype like we did with the infamous 2000 Muslim block vote for Bush (for which we should continue to make tawbah for, I believe, myself included), which ironically was on the platform that he would solve the same Palestine crisis that served as the perfect cresecendo ending to his failed symphony of a presidency (as Don King said: “Only in America!”). I voted for Obama too, don’t get me wrong, but I mainly did so because the alternative was far worse (I didn’t like “that one”). Maybe I’m a cynic, but our Hadith prophecies tell us that things will get worse as time goes on–it has to, or else the real Mahdi will never come–so to believe that ‘yes we can’ make all these wonderful changes happen, I think, in some way, is incompatible with believing in these same prophecies about the end of time. At the end of the day, our formula remains the same: our lives are to focus on making sure we maintain our elligibility for salvation (everything else, especially all types of activism is simply garnish at best) and wait… because in the end, when it’s all said and done, despite the efforts against us, we win. At this point in time, that’s the only thing that comforts me.