5. Iftiradh al Masai’l (Hypothetical Problems)

These were called, "What if" questions and earned the Iraqis the name of the ar-raaitoon or the "what-ifers." After analogy, people would use intellect to invent new problems so they could derive more rulings in case these problems happened. It’s good to a point but then people exaggerated and made impossible examples like if a fish led Salaah, would it be accepted. There was an incident of Imam Abu Hanifah when he saw a man who was so quiet and looked really religious. So out of respect for him, Abu Haneefah did not extend his leg in his direction. The man asked: "If the sun comes up before Fajr time, when should we fast?" Imam responded by saying, "it’s time to extend my leg" out towards him. There are reported to be 60,000 or 30,000 hypothetical cases in Abu Hanifah’s fiqh but they were not originated from him. Sometimes, people exaggerated so much that entire sections of Fiqh were thrown out of the hanafi books.