Hanafi Jurisprudence in the Grip of the Taliban: When Ignorance Replaces Reason

This article seeks to critically examine what Abdul Hakim Haqqani, the Taliban’s chief justice, presents in his book The System of the Islamic Emirate. In this work, Haqqani boldly positions himself as a latter-day Abu Hanifa, yet reduces Hanafi jurisprudence to little more than a tool for reinforcing tribal primitivism. While Abu Hanifa, the founder of the Hanafi School, stood as a pillar of rationality and civility in Islamic history, the Taliban, through their distorted interpretations, aim to disfigure this great intellectual legacy.

Throughout Islamic history, Hanafi jurisprudence has been one of the most important, credible, and dynamic schools of law. It was never a rigid framework, but rather a rational and social system designed to address the evolving needs of its time. Abu Hanifa, who founded this school in Kufa —a city where diverse ideas, cultures, and traditions intersected —was financially independent and refused to use religion as a political instrument. In his view, religion was meant to make people’s lives easier, not more burdensome. It was precisely this approach that led him to introduce reason and independent judgment (ijtihad) into jurisprudence, charting a path distinct from rigid literalism and sterile traditionalism.

From this perspective, Hanafi jurisprudence became a cornerstone of civilization in Khorasan and Transoxiana. Cities such as Bukhara, Samarkand, Herat, and Ghazni, where Hanafi law was intertwined with Persian language and urban culture, emerged as centers of Islamic learning, philosophy, and literature. As scholars have explained, this school rests on five principles: the Quran, the Sunnah, consensus, analogy, and ijtihad. The Quran was the first source, exemplified in the ruling on zakat, where Hanafi jurists elaborated details using other sources. The Sunnah sayings and actions of the Prophet were valid as long as they did not contradict the Quran, such as the manner of performing prayer clarified in prophetic tradition. Consensus meant the agreement of Islamic scholars on a legal matter. While ordinary people were not directly involved in jurisprudential reasoning, their customs and social practices were recognized within Hanafi law. For instance, commercial contracts widely practiced in marketplaces were deemed valid, even when no explicit text existed about them. Analogy served as a rational tool for addressing new issues: when the Quran prohibited wine, Hanafi jurists extended the ruling to narcotics by analogy, since the underlying cause of impairment of reason was the same. Finally, ijtihad granted jurists the discretion to adopt easier, more beneficial rulings, often accommodating custom and public interest. Abu Hanifa, on this basis, legitimized many of Kufa’s marketplace transactions because they reflected people’s real needs.

It is worth recalling that ijma in Islamic history was never confined to Sunni scholars alone. In Jafari jurisprudence, too, ijma holds a place as a source of law, albeit differently defined: it is binding only when it includes or reflects the opinion of the infallible Imam. In this sense, ijma also serves as a method of uncovering divine rulings within Jafari law. Thus, when we speak of “consensus of the scholars” today, its scope should be broad, encompassing the jurists of different Islamic schools, including Hanafi, Jafari, and others. Such an approach reflects the religious diversity of Afghan society and has historically served as a unifying factor among various sects and traditions. The Taliban, however, have completely distorted this principle: they confine consensus solely to their own clerics, excluding not only other Sunni schools but also Jafari scholars. In doing so, they strip ijma of its historical inclusivity and turn it into a narrow, sectarian tool of domination.

For a clearer understanding of these differences, one can compare the structure of Hanafi jurisprudence with the Taliban’s interpretation of it:

This table shows how the Taliban severs every principle of Islamic jurisprudence from its rational, civilizational essence—and even from the Quran and Sunnah themselves, reducing it instead to a tool for entrenching tribal primitivism.

For instance, the Quran explicitly states:

Verse 1 (al-Nisa: 58):
“Indeed, God commands you to render trusts to whom they are due, and when you judge between people, judge with justice. Excellent indeed is the admonition God gives you. Surely God is All-Hearing, All-Seeing.”

Verse 2 (al-Nisa: 93):
“And whoever kills a believer deliberately, his recompense is Hell, wherein he will abide eternally. God’s wrath and curse are upon him, and He has prepared for him a tremendous punishment.”

Taken together, these verses present two fundamental principles of Islamic law: the preservation of justice and the sanctity of human life. In the first, God sets out the standards of governance and judgment, justice, and fidelity to trust. In the second, the gravest Quranic warning is directed at those who violate the sanctity of a believer’s life through intentional murder.

Yet, from their inception to the present day, the Taliban have brazenly committed such acts, justifying them through their narrow, tribal reading. What in Hanafi jurisprudence once opened the doors to civilization and social dynamism has, under the Taliban’s interpretation, collapsed into closure, monopoly, and repression.

Although the Taliban claim to represent the Hanafi school, in truth their intellectual foundations lie in Deobandi thought, which emerged under British colonial rule, not in the Hanafi tradition itself. The Deobandi School, founded in nineteenth-century India, sought to redefine Islam as a political ideology by emphasizing a rigid legalism and rejecting Sufism and mysticism. While they attempted to affiliate themselves with Hanafi jurisprudence, in practice, they stood in opposition to its dynamic principles, such as qiyas, ijtihad, and recognition of custom, instead blending with Salafi austerity. The Taliban have further fused this Deobandi rigidity with Pashtun tribalism. The result is not a natural continuation of Hanafi thought, but a tribal zed Deobandi distortion of it. In this sense, the Taliban can be described as a “Pashtun tribal product,” a formation that, by confining religion within the boundaries of ethnic chauvinism, has not only disfigured Hanafi jurisprudence but also placed the Pashtun people themselves at risk of historical disrepute. This tribal dependency does not serve the Pashtuns; rather, it threatens their social legitimacy and their place in history.

These transformations have reduced Hanafi jurisprudence, once the cornerstone of urban civilization in Khorasan and Transoxiana, into a rigid, tribalized form of law. Whereas in the Hanafi tradition the consensus of the Muslim community (ijma) and social custom guaranteed the dynamism of society, under the Taliban consensus has been confined to a narrow circle of dependent, salaried clerics, and custom has been downgraded to primitive tribal codes such as (Pashtunwali,) misogyny, nepotism, and patriarchy values that are in stark contradiction to the principles of Islam itself. This reduction shows that the Taliban do not employ Hanafi jurisprudence as a tool to meet society’s needs, but rather as an instrument to legitimize tribal primitivism.

The difference between these two approaches becomes evident in their consequences. Abu Hanifa built a civilizational tradition through ijtihad (independent reasoning) and qiyas (analogical deduction), but the Taliban, by suspending these very principles, shut the door to any form of renewal. Hanafi jurisprudence was a city-building force that, alongside the Persian language, enriched the culture of Khorasan. The Taliban, however, regard the city as the center of corruption and replace it with the logic of the desert. This is precisely what Ibn Khaldun explained in his theory: tribal solidarity (‘asabiyya) can establish a state, but when faced with urban prosperity and civilization, such a state collapses. By relying on tribal solidarity, the Taliban have set Afghanistan firmly on this path of decline.

The Taliban and their supporters claim they are a force of progress. Yet history tells a different story. The Timurids in Herat created a civilization only when they embraced urban culture and the Persian language. The Mongols, despite their military power, when they relied solely on the tribe, not only destroyed cities but also ultimately disintegrated in the face of civilization. The Taliban follow the latter path, a path that leads to isolation, confrontation with civility, and eventual collapse.

Conclusion

The historical Hanafi tradition was one of the pillars of rationality, civility, and state-building. The Taliban have gravely distorted this legacy, reducing it to a tool of tribalism and ideological monopoly. This is not merely an alternative interpretation, but an intellectual and civilizational betrayal. Afghanistan today is not just facing a reactionary system, but one that falsely equates itself with Abu Hanifa while, in practice, distorting his ijtihad. The very reasoning that for centuries served as the foundation of Khorasan’s civilization and progress has now, under the Taliban, been turned into hostility toward cities, knowledge, women, diversity, and all manifestations of civility. This process not only imprisons Afghan society in the cage of regression but also endangers the shared heritage of the Islamic world.

The consequences of such distortion are clear: the weakening of civil institutions, the collapse of social legitimacy, the deepening of ethnic and sectarian divides, and, ultimately, the entry into the cycle Ibn Khaldun described as the “decline of nomadic civilization.” In pursuing this course, the Taliban are not guardians of religion and Sharia, but destroyers of Islamic rationality and saboteurs of the Hanafi tradition’s civilizational foundations. To grant the Taliban legitimacy is not merely to accept a tribal authoritarian regime, but to consent to the mutilation of a global intellectual legacy. If Afghan society and the broader Islamic world fail to confront this betrayal and malice, not only Afghanistan’s future but also the standing of Hanafi jurisprudence as one of the symbols of Islamic rationality will face annihilation.

Finally, if we situate the Taliban in a broader historical framework, a striking resemblance emerges between them and the jahiliyya of pre-Islamic Arabia. That jahiliyya was based on tribal solidarity, the denial of reason, the subjugation of women, patriarchy, nepotism, and hostility to urban civilization. The Taliban operate by the same logic: they derive legitimacy from the tribe, suppress and erase women, regard the city as a hub of corruption, and fear diversity and civil institutions. In other words, the Taliban and the jahiliyya of Arabia are two sides of the same coin, two forms of the same primitive mindset that stands in opposition to civilization, knowledge, and rationality. Islam, with its advent, challenged the jahiliyya and set forth a path of rationality and civility. The Taliban, instead of continuing along this path, are in fact a project to restore that same jahiliyya, albeit cloaked in the garb of Sharia. This is the danger Afghanistan faces today: not merely political backwardness, but a return to the darkness of jahiliyya disguised as Islamic law.

Sources

• Bosworth, Clifford Edmund. The Ghaznavids: Their Empire in Afghanistan and Eastern Iran (994–1040 CE). Edinburgh University Press, 2011.
• Coulson, Noel. A History of Islamic Law. Edinburgh University Press, 1964.
• Hallaq, Wael. An Introduction to Islamic Law. Cambridge University Press, 2009.
• Haqqani, Abdul Hakim. The System of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. Kabul: Taliban Publications, 2020.
• Ibn Khaldun. The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History. Translated by Franz Rosenthal. Princeton University Press, 1967.
• Kamali, Mohammad Hashim. Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence. Islamic Texts Society, 1991.
• Marghinani, Burhan al-Din. Al-Hidaya: The Guidance, trans. Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee. Islamic Texts Society, 2000.
• Rashid, Ahmed. Taliban: Islam, Oil and the New Great Game in Central Asia. Yale University Press, 2000.
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• Schacht, Joseph. An Introduction to Islamic Law. Oxford University Press, 1964.

You can read the Persian version of this analysis here:

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