An Imam Azam Conference on, Imam Azam Imam-ul-Aimma fil Hadith, was held at the head quarters of Minhaj-ul-Quran International, Lahore, in which Shaykh-ul-Islam Dr Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri gave an historic lecture stemming from several months of research in which he proved that Imam Azam Abu Hanifa is the Imam of Hadith of all imams of Hadith including Imam Bukhari, Imam Muslim, Imam Tirmizi, Imam Abu Dawood, Imam Nasai etc.

Guest Scholars and Mashaikh

Hundreds of renowned scholars and Mashaikh from the length and breadth of the country came to the conference in order to witness the historic display by Shaykh-ul-Islam of his latest research which has never been done before in the whole history of Islam.

Some of the most renowned Scholars who attended are Peer Ameen-ul-Hasnaat son of Pir Justice Karam Shah al-Azhari, Allama Muhibbullah Nuri son of Faqih-e-Azam Allama Nur-ullah Naeemi, Shaykh Ahmad Zubaidi from Syria, Iranian Consulate General Aqai Raza Amini, Pir Sayyad Bilal Hussain Shah of Ajmaihr Shareef, Pir Khawaja Mueen ud-Deen Kuraijah, Sayyed Azmat Ali Shah Hamdani, Allama Niyaz Hussain Najafi, Professor Dr Jameel-ur-Rahman Chisti, Agha Murtaza Poya, Allama Ali Gazanfer Kararwi, Professor Abd-ur-Rahman Bukhari.

Talks by Guest Scholars and Mashaikh

Brief talks were delivered by some of the main guests as they appreciated the great historic effort of Shaykh-ul-Islam on cutting the roots of all baseless accusations levelled against Imam Azam Abu Hanifa for centuries. They stated that existence of such accusations and the inability of comprehensively rebutting them for centuries held a sense of shame among the lovers of Imam Azam across the globe, especially the Hanafis. They said that Shaykh-ul-Islam Dr Tahir-ul-Qadri, by conducting his deep and unprecedented research to prove that Imam Azam is the Imam-ul-Aimma fil Hadith, shows that Shaykh-ul-Islam is not only a great scholar, Interpreter of the Quran, a revolutionary leader and a thinker but has proved with out any shadow of a doubt that he is one of the biggest Muhadiths. Being the Mujadid of the present century it was only fitting for him to raise the heads of all Hanfis with pride as now they could prove to critics on how Imam Abu Hanifa truly is Imam Azam in Hadith as well as Fiqh. They concluded by hoping that Shaykh-ul-Islam would continue to revive Islam through his great mission of Minhaj-ul-Quran International (MQI) with their full backing and support behind him.

Historic Lecture

 Shaykh-ul-Islam Dr Tahir-ul-Qadri delivered a lecture lasting just under four hours which was heavily condensed due to shortage of time. Dr Tahir-ul-Qadri announced that the whole of his research on this topic will be included in his book which will be published soon consisting of two volumes. He said he will only cover some of the main points of his research in the lecture.

Shaykh-ul-Islam totally demolished the slur that Imam Abu Hanifa only had knowledge of 17 hadiths or a limited number of hadith by an avalanche of arguments proving that Imam Abu Hanifa is actually the Shaykh in Hadith of all the main Imams of Hadith.

Main points of the lecture are given below which prove that Imam Azam Abu Hanifa is the Imam-ul-Aimma fil Hadith:

• The hadith of Bukhari and Muslim, "a man from the children of Faaris will acquire knowledge even if it is in the stars" actually refers to Imam Abu Hanifa and not Sulaiman Farsi or any other Imam.

• Imam Azam Abu Hanifa was a tabiee and had taken traditions from many sahabah. He was the only imam of Hadith who had taken all of his traditions from the "khair-ul-Qurun" from whom there is no possibility of fabricating traditions; this is why Imam Abu Hanifa received traditions which were not received by later Imams of Hadith Like Imam Bukhari and Imam Muslim etc. as they had set strict conditions in accepting any tradition which severely limited the number of traditions which they accepted as Sahih.

• The whole of the Sihah Sittah consists of 10,000 traditions but the musnads of Imam Abu Hanifah have a minimum of 10,000 traditions according to various narrations.

• Imam Azam's students were the Shaykhs of Imam Bukhari, Imam Muslim and others as they had taken hadiths from them. This makes Imam Azam Abu Hanifa the grand shaykh of Imam Bukhari , Imam Muslim and others.

• Sahih Bukhari is renowned for its salasiyaat: traditions which only have 3 links between Imam Bukhari and The Prophet SAW which number seventeen. Imam Azam Abu Hanifah has narrated traditions which only have one link between him and the Prophet SAW. This was a great revelation by Shaykh-ul-Islam as this was not pointed out by anyone in the past. Shaykh-ul-Islam devised the term Uhadiyaat for such traditions. Imam Abu Hanifah is the only Imam of hadith to have these traditions. Then Shaykh-ul-Islam revealed that there are also a great number of traditions narrated b Imam Azam Abu Hanifa which only have two links between him and the Prophet SAW which he termed as thanaiyaat. Again no other Imam of hadith has these traditions. The number of sulasiyaat narrated by Imam Abu Hanifa are so many that they have not been counted.

• The salasiyaat of Bukhari, which are seen as the cream of Sahih Bukhari, 15 of the 17 were taken by Imam Bukhari from the students of Imam Azam Abu Hanifa.

• The fact that Imam Bukhari did not take traditions directly from Imam Azam was not because he doubted the great status of Imam Azam in hadith. It was because Imam Bukhari has mentioned in his books that he only took traditions from people who considered iman to consist of declaration by the tongue, acceptance by the heart and practice upon Islam. Imam Abu Hanifah did not agree with that definition of Iman and only believed Iman to consist of the declaration of the tongue and acceptance by the heart.

• Imam Muslim who was the student of Imam Bukhari did not take any tradition directly from Imam Bukhari in his Sahih Muslim; the same is the case with other Imams of Hadith who did not take traditions from their teachers. Imam Bukhari was a Shafai but did not take any traditions from Imam Shafai in his Sahih al-Bukhari. So not taking traditions from any Imam of hadith did not mean that the Imam who did not take them was in doubt of the hadithic ability of the Imam he was not taking the traditions from.

• Shaykh-ul-Islam gave quotations from great Imams who regarded Imam Abu Hanifah as Imam Azam and the greatest authority in Hadith and knowledge.

Note: Full details, facts and figures were given in the lecture which can be viewed on this site, this was only an overview of the speech.

The historic lecture left all participants in shock, in the amount of new information which they had received from Shaykh-ul-Islam which they had never imagined to their wildest imaginations had even existed.

Lunch was served to all the participants which was arranged by Shaykh-ul-Islam himself. Shaykh-ul-Islam had lunch with the main guests.

Report by Jawed Iqbal Tahiri