Correspondence with Maulana Abul Lais Islahi Nadwi

whereas, if my understanding is correct, the wording should have been lam yurad ash-shariah or lam yurad ashshariah al-Muhammadiyyah. This point, it seems, was written hastily. Had he reflected, he would have realized that the plural form was used because it was necessary to indicate that the laws of all the Prophets (including the last Prophet) are not what is meant here. The word shara’i‘ automatically includes the Muhammadan Shariah; it is not excluded from it. However, if any lexicon stated that shara’i‘ means “laws other than the Muhammadan Shariah,” then certainly his argument would be correct. Now I come to the most astonishing part of his writing. In the discussion on aqeem-ud-deen, when refuting my position regarding the references I cited from the scholars of Tafsir, he stated that not all commentators share this view. At this point, he quoted two commentators and asserted that, according to them, “this command to establish the religion also includes, fully and entirely, the detailed injunctions of the Shariah.” But you might be surprised to learn that this “discovery” about the two commentators—specifically, that in their view this command aqeem-ud-deen includes all the rulings of the Shariah in full detail—is not actually present in