Examples of Abu al-Hasan al-Laknawi’s following of the Prophetic Sunnah and abandoning sectarian bias in his book Sharh al-Muwatta’ according to the narration of al-Shaybani.

The Shaykh : These are the examples that come to my mind at this moment. When he reached the hadith: , he mentioned the position of Imam al-Shafi'i, who holds that it is obligatory for the follower to recite al-Fatihah, even in the loud prayers. He reports from Malik that the follower recites silently, but not in the loud prayers, and from his imam, Abu Hanifah, that the follower does not recite, neither in the silent nor the loud prayers. He cites the evidence of these scholars, then adopts a middle position that agrees with the position of Imam Ahmad (may Allah have mercy on him), similar to the position of Malik, that the follower recites in the silent prayers but not in the loud ones. He cites many of the evidences of the Hanafis, who are accustomed to arguing with every hadith regardless of its authenticity or weakness. From these hadiths, for example, which are not authentic: , he clarifies with complete objectivity that this hadith has no validity and discusses it in the manner of the cautious. Here, he took a middle position between those who say it is obligatory, the obligation of reciting al-Fatihah absolutely, whether the follower is behind the imam in the loud prayer or the silent prayer. Then he refuted the position of his imam, Abu Hanifah, who holds that there is no recitation absolutely, even in the silent prayer. He adopted the middle position that Imam Ahmad (may Allah have mercy on him) had adopted before him, even though very, very few of the Hanafi scholars depart from the well-known position among them, which is the position of their imam regarding listening absolutely, even in the silent prayer.
Likewise, he differed from the position of all the Hanafis when he preferred the recommended practice of raising the hands, or perhaps it is more accurate to say: the desirability of raising the hands when bowing and when rising from it. He may have gone to the extent of raising the hands with every takbir, but I am not one to assert that now. However, that he preferred raising the hands when bowing, when rising from it, and when rising from the first tashahhud to the third rak'ah, I am certain that he said that, and thereby he differed from the Hanafi scholars who explicitly state that raising the hands other than in the takbir of ihram is disliked to the extent of prohibition. And they built upon this severe ruling, as you hear, their statement regarding the dislike of praying behind the Shafi'is, because they raise their hands in these takbirs. And I said earlier that they said it is desirable to raise the hands, not that it is a recommended practice, because he took a middle position between the Hanafis on one side and the Shafi'is on the other, to reconcile the hadiths that affirm it, such as the hadith of Ibn 'Umar, Abu Humayd al-Sa'idi, Malik ibn Huwayris, and others who narrated the raising in those three places: at the takbir of ihram, at the bowing, and at raising the head from it. He reconciled these hadiths with the hadith of Ibn Mas'ud (may Allah be pleased with him), which Abu Dawud and others narrated from him, in which he said to some of his companions: . He intended not to discard this negating hadith, so he arrived at the following result: that both raising and leaving it are a recommended practice. Therefore, the recommended practice is to raise sometimes and leave it sometimes, utilizing both sides of the hadiths: the affirming hadiths and the negating hadith of Ibn Mas'ud.
There is another hadith with the meaning of the hadith of Ibn Mas'ud, which is the hadith of al-Bara' ibn 'Azib. But in this hadith of al-Bara', there is a weak narrator, I think—because my knowledge of it is old—his name is Yazid ibn Abi Ziyad al-Hashimi al-Dimashqi.
The point is that if this man had lived longer, we would have seen more fairness from him in the disputed issues between the Hanafis and others than what appeared in this commentary, because it is not a large commentary. It is: *Al-Ta'liq al-Majid 'ala Muwatta' al-Imam Muhammad*.
So in some of the issues I referred to in the question, he actually indicates that he combined the knowledge of hadith terminology with the knowledge of jurisprudence, which is called today comparative jurisprudence. But we must say the truth: that any person who has lived for many years worshipping Allah (Blessed and Exalted is He) according to one of the followed schools of jurisprudence, it is never easy to get rid of following a scholar without knowing his evidence in one go, but rather he progresses gradually in that. Therefore, there may be in those means something that cannot be accepted as correct, such as a bias, for example, and naturally 'Abd al-Fattah Abu Ghuddah supported him in that by giving weight to the statement of those who authenticated Abu Hanifah and discarding the statements of the other imams, who are the majority of the scholars among the critics who weakened Abu Hanifah, at least on the side of his poor memory. So it is a bias, and we hope that this bias is not one of the effects of fanaticism for his imam, but rather that it became clear to him and he went to authenticating Abu Hanifah, contrary to Imam Ahmad, al-Bukhari, Muslim, and the majority of the hadith scholars. This is what comes to my mind now in answer to that question.