The Khuffayn in Muslim Ritual Thought

 
            Little known is just how nuanced and deep a discussion medieval, and modern Muslims have had about footwear. While many academics write articles or books on the history of Islamic law as a whole or Islamic legal theory, rarely do they ever give the khuffayn the credence they deserve.[1] It is typically merely gleamed over as a snippet of Ṭahāra (ritual purification), and not deeply investigated. Conventionally the khuffayn are translated as ‘leather socks,’ sometimes as ‘slippers,’ and more rarely as ‘shoes.’ Through the medieval passages that I have investigated regarding the khuffayn, that the stronger position, likely, is that they are more akin boots than the aforementioned options.  I hope to make it quite clear that the khuffayn has much more significance to Islamic thought than perhaps previously understood or explored – even having theological and sectarian ramifications, which (perhaps) inculcates self-identity to the ritual-practitioner and observer. Nearly every Islamic ritual law book mentions them, and often with more rigor and detail then other topics. I am attempting here, in this small genealogy, to briefly demonstrate why the khuffayn became a contentious polemic, the physicality of the khuff, and how thought around the khuffayn developed. Then I would like to parse the components of the ritual in order to elucidate new understandings in the realm of Ritual Studies.
            All Muslims believe the Quran to be the divine speech of God, and the ultimate source of Islamic law. However, the Qur’an is not a detailed manual on Islamic ritual law. Muslims, at varying degrees, have affirmed the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ as a source of Islamic ritual law. As for the khuffayn, they are not mentioned or alluded to in the Quran whatsoever. On the contrary, and not then surprisingly, we find the khuffayn in the ḥadīth collections. One of the alleged very early collections of aḥādīth, Kitāb al-Āthār of Abū Ḥanīfa[2], has a chapter on the khuffayn entitled, “al-masḥ ‘alā al-khuffayn” (The wiping upon the two khuffs). What is striking about this chapter is the placement of within within Kitāb al-Āthār. Unlike later ḥadīth collections and fiqh mukhtaṣars (small legal manuals), the chapter on the khuffayn is quite early in the book preceded only by ablution and water left over by animals, making the chapter on the khuffayn the third bāb (chapter) of the book.  This is a strikingly straightforward indication that this book was written before the codification of ḥadīth and fiqh manuals and its attribution the 8th century Kufan Jurist Abū Ḥanīfa more possible. Similarly, in the Muwaṭṭāʾ[3] of the Medinan Jurist Mālik ibn Anas, also from the 8th century, has an unusual chapter order, or placement of the chapter regarding the khuffayn. The Muwaṭṭāʾ starts with the times of prayer, and then goes into ablution. Early in the book the Khuffayn appear. In Bewley’s edition it is the 8th chapter, and in Muḥammad Shaybānī’s version it is the 13th. This is also contrary to ḥadīth collections and both late-medieval and contemporary fiqh books that contain the chapter on the khuffayn, which usually contains the chapter of the khuffayn near the end of the chapter on ablution by the chapter on major ablution (ghusl) and/or dry ablution (tayammum). This appearance of disorganization, suggests these three aforementioned books predate the 10th and 11th century codification of law manuals. The Musnad of Imam Shāfiʿī[4] places the chapter “fī masḥ ‘alā al-khuffayn” just before tayammum indicating that Shāfiʿī probably had a major impact on the organization of the fiqh genre and ḥadīth collections, as Dr. Ahmed El-Shamsy suggests,[5] or that it was the Ahl al-Ḥadīth (traditionalists) who originated this sequence and influenced Shāfiʿī. Regardless, Shāfiʿī’s Musnad still contains what appears to be an archaic sequence of chapters and archaic chapter names, which makes it probable to have originated in the 8th- 9th century.  Al-Umm, likewise, does not follow the chapter sequence of later ḥadīth collections and fiqh mukhtaṣars.[6] In all the aforementioned books, there is one main ḥadīth that is reported. This ḥadīth is the same in meaning. The particular wording in Kitāb al-Āthār[7] differs from the narration found in both versions of the Muwaṭṭāʾ[8] and the particular wording in the Musnad[9] differs from the both the Muwaṭṭāʾ and Kitāb al-Āthār.  Moreover, the particular wording found in al-Umm is also different in wording, but the same in meaning.[10] Below is the ḥadīth from Kitāb al-Āthār:
...عن المغيرة بن شعبة رضي الله عنه أنّه خرج مع رسول الله صلّى الله عليه وسلّم في سفر فانطلق رسول الله صلّى الله عليه وسلّم فقضى حاجته ثمّ رجع وعليه جبّة روميّة ضيقة الكمّين فرفعها رسول الله صلّى الله عليه وسلّم مِن ضيق كمّيها قال المغيرة: فجعلتُ أصبّ عليه الماء مِن إداوة معي فتوضّأ وُضوءَه للصلاة ومسح على خفّيه ولم ينزعْهما ثمّ  تقدّم وصلّى.[11]
     From al-Mughīra Bin Shuʿba, may God be pleased with him, that he left with the Messenger of God ﷺ on a journey and the Messenger of God ﷺ departed to answer the call of nature. Then he returned and upon him was a roman cloak (jubba) with two tight sleeves. The Messenger of God ﷺ raised its tight sleeves, and al-Mughīra said, ‘I put the water-skin with me at an incline [pouring] over him water. He made his ablution for prayer and wiped over his two boots. He did not take them off, then he stepped forth and prayed.’[12]
The Muwaṭṭāʾ also informs us that the journey was the battle of Tabūk.[13] The narration in Musnad Shāfiʿī tells us that al-Mughīra went down to take off the khuffayn from the feet of Muḥammad, but Muḥammad repudiated him saying, “Leave the khuffayn, because, verily, I put them on my two feet and they are ritually pure.” In al-Umm, Muḥammad’s ablution and the subsequent prayer are elucidated in detail. The abovementioned ḥadīth is also found in the early collection, Muṣannaf ʿAbd ar-Rizzāq aṣ-Ṣanʿānī, the Muwaṭṭāʾ, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī in many other versions and in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim over seven times.[14] The Khuff is also mentioned in the other four canonical Sunni ḥadīth collections.[15] There are over seventy narrations regarding the khuffayn. This informs us that the khuffayn remained an integral tradition (sunna) to the early Muslim community between the 8th and late 10th century when various sectarian tensions were heightened.
            The next question is naturally, “How did the Muslim community receive these reports?” and “What did they think about them?” One of the most widespread and widely accepted book of early Sunnī creed is that of the 9th-10th century Islamic scholar Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad aṭ-Ṭaḥāwī entitled al-ʿAqīda aṭ-Ṭaḥāwīya.[16] In one line, Ṭaḥāwī states, “We hold the opinion that wiping upon the khuffayn during the journey and residency [is acceptable] like what came in the report.”[17] What is striking here is that Ṭaḥāwī made the issue of wiping over the khuffayn as a matter of creed. In the introduction of Ṭaḥāwī’s book, he declares his creedal formulations as originating from Abū Ḥanīfa and his students. One notable work of Abū Ḥanīfa that mentions this issue is al-Fiqh al-Akbar.[18] Just before a very serious creedal line regarding excommunication (takfīr), Abū Ḥanīfa says, “The wiping upon the khuffayn is a sunna.”[19]  Abū Ḥanīfa goes on to say in his book al-Waṣiyya, “We declare that wiping over leather socks is permissible for one day and night for the resident and three days and three nights for the traveler, as the ḥadīth elucidates. Unbelief is feared for the one who denies this because its status is close to that of the uninterrupted narration (mutawātir).”[20] Abū Ḥasan al-Karkhī (d. 951) is known to have said, “I fear a state of disbelief for the one who rejects wiping over the foot-coverings.”[21] Regarding theological creedal formulations, The contemporary Muslim-American scholar Hamza Yusuf says, “One is the necessity of belief in multiply-transmitted hadith, which have the status of the Qur’an in their legal and creedal consideration.”[22] He then goes on to say, “To reject a multiply-transmitted hadith is akin to rejecting a verse in the Qur’an and hence is a type of disbelief threatening one’s faith.”[23] Contemporary British-Muslim scholar Abdur-Rahman Ibn Yusuf, commenting on Abū Ḥanīfa’s passages on the khuffayn, says that they were mentioned as a rebuttal of the “Rāfiḍī Shīʿa who deny the wiping over the leather socks.”[24] In Schact’s Muhammadan Jurisprudence, these polemics are mentioned in his chapter on Shīʿī Law, and Devin J. Stewart also uncovered in his book Islamic Legal Orthodoxy that some of the first explicitly fiqh-genre texts written by Shīʿī (Twelver) authors were refuting the khuffayn.[25] Arzina R. Lalani in her study on Muḥammad al-Bāqir (677-d.733), the fifth Shīʿī Imam, demonstrates that al-Bāqir was the first Shīʿī to repudiate and forbid wiping over the khuffayn.[26] However, in Qaḍī al-Nuʿmān’s Daʿāʾim al-Islām (10th century), He attributes the prohibition of wiping upon the Khuffayn to Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī, “He was asked about rubbing over the shoes, but remained silent until they came to a place where there was water and the questioner was with him. [The Imam] dismounted and, in performing ablution, rubbed over his shoes and turban and said, ‘This is the ablution of one whose ablution has never been invalidated by the occurrence of impurity!’”[27] Yet many early legal theorists (Uṣūlīs) attributed this stance to the companions ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib and Ibn ʿAbbās. ʿAlī is quoted to have said, “Oh people! Verily the Book had eclipsed (sabaqa) wiping upon the khuffayn,” as he believed along with Ibn ʿAbbās that the Qur’an abrogated wiping upon the khuffayn.[28] In his polemical passage al-Nuʿmān qoutes Imam Jaʿfar b. Muḥammad as saying, “Precautionary dissimulation (taqīya) is my religion and the religion of my fathers, except in three actions: drinking intoxicants; wiping over shoes [during ablution]; and not pronouncing the basmala loudly [in prayer].”[29] al-Nuʿmān goes on to explain how prayer behind one who wipes over the khuffayn is invalid since the prayer-leader would not be in a state of purity. He also says the Imams forbade wiping over turbans, veils, headgear (qalansuwa), gloves, galoshes, or sandals.  Being that Qaḍī al-Nuʿmān is accepted by both the Twelvers and Ismailis (Seveners), this shows that the khuffayn were a very polemical issue for a large number of Muslims in the early medieval period. 
            But was this only a debate between the Shīʿa and Sunnis? There is also evidence that early Kharijites and later Ibāḍīs unanimously forbade wiping upon the khuffayn.[30] Ersilia Francesca argues that during the first century of the Islamic empire, the Kharijites forbade wiping upon the khuffayn, especially Jābir ibn Zayd who died when Abū Ḥanīfa was approximately twelve years of age.[31] Valerie Hoffman found the earliest extant creedal text from the Ibāḍīs, Nasab al-Islām, written by Abū Ayyūb Wāʾil b. Ayyūb al-Ḥaḍramī from the 8th century where wiping upon the khuffayn is prohibited – as a matter of creed – amongst other Sunni practices.[32]  It does appear likely that the Sunnis were the only ones wiping upon their footgear. Therefore, in order to distinguish themselves, non-Sunnis rejected this practice, while Sunnis felt the need to affirm it. They could not legally claim it as mandatory (wājib), because it was a mere dispensation, so therefore they emphasized it as a compulsory part of creed. Other than mere group-identity (ʿaṣabīya), why did the Shīʿa and Kharijīs reject wiping upon the khuffayn? Francesca alludes to it, by saying up until the 12th century, Ibāḍīs were strongly discouraged to read Sunni ḥadīth collections “as far as possible.”[33] It is also noteworthy to mention, that the Sunni ḥadīth corpus in regards to the khuffayn usually have Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, or ʿUthmān in the chain of narration. This may be a major factor in why the Shīʿa were keen to reject wiping upon the khuffayn. Moreover, the Kharijīs were known to excommunicate ʿUthmān and ʿAlī.[34] Even within early ‘Sunnism,’ there was likely was a lot of debate regarding whether or not ablution entailed actually fully washing the feet or merely wiping over them – contingent on different grammatical readings of the ‘ablution verse’ of the Qur’an [5:6].[35] According to Ibn Rushd (12th century), in the first generation of Muslims, and as narrated by Imam Mālik, there were three legal opinions regarding the permissibly of wiping upon the khuffayn within ‘Sunnism.’ Firstly, the complete permissibility. Secondly, wiping upon the khuffayn is only permissible in travel, and thirdly that it is never permissible.[36]  The first option ended up becoming the predominant Sunnī opinion as we will see later on.[37] While law and theology had not yet been codified during the first century of Islam, rituals – such as wiping on the khuffayn – appear to have been used socially as sectarian identity markers. Hossein Modarressi shows that, “Sunnī scholars, as well as the Shīʿites and Ibāḍīs themselves, were aware of the Shīʿite/Ibāḍī common position on this case.”[38] He also shows that the Shīʿites and Ibāḍīs considered wiping over the khuffayn as a reprehensible innovation (bidʿa) and/or defined “belief in its illegality as an item of the creed.”[39] This would suggest that there was a formulation of sectarian self-identity before the codification of the Sunnī schools of Islamic law, and the codification of Twelver jurisprudence. It is clear that from the very early period of Islam until contemporary times, the khuffayn seem to have a very unique place in ḥadīth collections and creedal formulations of Islamic scholars. But what physically were the khuffayn and how were they understood by classical Muslim jurists?
            Linguistically the word “khuff” comes from the root kh.f.f such as the word khafīf meaning “light” (in regards to weight) or “thin,” “nimble,” “agile,” “to reduce,” “to alleviate,” “to make easier,” “to make less,” etc. Although the word “khuff” itself is not found in the Qur’an, its root is in many places.[40] Another meaning offered by Muḥyiddīn Ibn ʿArabī in addition to kh.f.f, is that khuff comes from the root kh.f.y, which has the meaning of concealment or covering. Ibn ʿArabī says, “we call shoes ‘khuff’ because of khafāʾ ([the foot] being hidden), as the shoe completely veils (s.t.r.) the foot.”[41]  For Ibn ʿArabī, the root could be either kh.f.f or kh.f.y and so he comments on both as if they are equal probabilities – a dual myth for one ritual. This may appear strange, but this fits precisely with a fundamental theoretical notion in Lacanian psychoanalysis called The Signifying Chain (la chaîne signifiante).[42] Based of Sigmund Freud’s case of the Ratman, where Freud showed that symptoms can literally be words trapped in the psyche. For the Ratman, words like Spielratte, heiraten, and raten were part of the linguistic network that connected various compulsions and problematic actions that plagued the Rat-Man. For Jacques Lacan, the Symbolic order, including language, is what shapes our perception of “reality” and Freud’s Ratman case shows the dominance of language over realia.[43] For the Ratman, it was not a traumatic ineffable event that cause his symptoms but rather a story told to him via language – a torture method used in the military where a metal pot containing a rat is put upon the victims buttocks and heated, so the rats only option is to eat its way out through the anus – which ultimately caused his symptoms.[44] Unconsciously, otherwise completely unrelated words (semantically), may affect our psyche such as thinking about kh.f.y when looking at the root kh.f.f.  Kh.f.f and kh.f.y are both signifiers in the same signifying chain that shape our reality both conscious and unconscious. This phonemic chain therefore dominants the semantic domain linguistics, which shapes our very psyche.[45]
            Besides linguistic analysis, one narration mentions that Ibrāhīm an-Nakhaʿī “used to wipe over his galoshes (jurmūq, pl. jarāmīq).”[46]  What the linguistic root and historical evidence indicates through induction is that the khuffayn were probably a lighter footwear that covered the entire foot in which a heavier galosh could be worn over. Whether the word “khuff” refers to a specific particular set of footwear or a certain genre or style of footwear remains unclear. There appears to be no pre-Islamic reference to them. The oldest extant book of Islamic positive law (furūʿ) is Kitāb al-Aṣl (a.k.a. al-Mabsūṭ) written by Abū Ḥanīfa’s student Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Shaybānī.[47] His book has the feeling of a dialogue between Shaybānī and Abū Ḥanīfa, where the former postulates a question, “I said: What is your opinion on a guy [who does this or that] (Qultu: ʾA raʾayta rajulan)...” and then receives an answer from the latter, “He said: It is not sufficient for him. (lā yujzīhi).” Mehmet Boynukalın cogently argues, in his preface, that Shaybānī had a significant impact on early Islamic law. One of Shaybānī’s students, Asad b. al-Furāt made a collection of positive law called al-Asadiyya that the author of the Mudawwana references.[48] He also quotes the famous saying attributed to Shāfiʿī, “The people are dependents upon Abū Ḥanīfa in regards to Fiqh.”[49] He even mentions one of Shāfiʿī’s students, al-Muzanī, who relays that one of his Shāfiʿite teachers used to “create positive law [based] upon the books of Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan.” Boynukalın also relates a report about Aḥmad b. al-Ḥanbal, “From where did you get these detailed issues? He [al-Ḥanbal] answered that they are from the books of Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan.”[50] According to Boynukalın, one would be lead to believe this was a very influential early legal text, most likely the first of its kind and the largest at that time (in positive law). Generally the assumption regarding Islamic legal historiography is that naturally Islamic positive law was postulated and codified firstly, then later it’s epistemological underpinnings were explicated – most famously in the work al-Risāla by Shāfiʿī.[51] Initially, the early Muslim community were interested in having a code to maintain social cohesion and identity. In his book, Shaybānī dedicates fourteen pages to the issue of the khuffayn (in modern Arabic print). Within these fourteen pages I have identified approximately seventy-seven separate issues (masāʾil) regarding the khuffayn. Moreover, the latter half of the chapter deals primarily with soldiers and the army possibly indicating the khuff may have originally been related to the military. Clearly, the footwear had ritual significance to the early Sunnis even in their minutiae.
            In Kitāb al-Āthār and Shaybānī’s Muwaṭṭāʾ we numerously find the formulation “Muḥammad [al-Shaybānī] said, ‘It is the saying of Abū Ḥanīfa, and we adhere to it.’” after certain narrations. The formula appears after nearly every narration regarding the khuffayn, and I suspect that this phrasing appears after a narration where there is controversy. The phrase appears after a narration reporting that the khuffayn can only be wiped over one day and one night for the resident and three days and three nights for the traveler,[52] which was not the opinion of Mālik ibn Anas, who allowed the wiping over the khuff indefinitely for both the traveler and resident.[53] At the end of the chapter regarding the khuffayn in the Muwaṭṭāʾ, Shaybānī affirms the position that wiping may only last for one day and night for the resident, and three days and nights for the traveler.[54] Omitted from Shaybānī’s version is the chapter “The Praxis Regarding Wiping Over the Khuffayn,”[55] which has the method of wiping that Mālik preferred. One narration states:
 
وحدّثني عن مالك: أنّه سأل ابن شهاب عن المسح على الخفّين كيف هو؟ فأدْخل ابن شهاب إحدى يديه تحت الخفّ والأُخرى فوْقه ثمّ أمرّهما.
قال يَحْيَى قال مالك وقَوْلُ ابن شهاب أحبّ ما سَمِعْتُ إِلَيَّ في ذلك.[56]
“It was narrated to me from Mālik that he asked Ibn Shihāb about the wiping over the khuffayn, how is it done? Ibn Shihāb placed one of his hands under the khuff, and the other on top of it, then passed over them.
Yaḥyā said that Mālik said, ‘Out of what I have heard about that, I prefer the statement of Ibn Shihāb.’” 
This ran contrary to the opinions of many early companions and jurists such as ʿAlī, al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī, Abū Ḥanīfa, Sufyān al-Thawrī, Shāfiʿī and Aḥmed Ibn Ḥanbal.[57] The early Ḥanafī jurist, Aḥmed Ibn Muḥammad al-Qudūrī (10th century), who wrote one of the early Ḥanafī mukhtaṣars, and surely the most influential one, says in his mukhtaṣar[58] regarding the method of khuff wiping, “The wiping of the khuffayn is upon the tops of them, making lines with the fingers.” The author of the earliest extant Ḥanbalī mukhtaṣar, Abū al-Qāsim al-Khiraqī (10th century), said in his Mukhtaṣar fī al-Fiqh,[59] “He wipes upon the top of the foot. If he wipes the bottom of it, other than the aforementioned, it is not accepted of him.” Shāfiʿī has a pretty detailed section on the khuffayn in al-Umm that give us some insights as to how he thought of the khuffayn legally and the physical make up of the khuff. He begins his section[60] on the khuffayn with the ablution verse (see above). In a later page, he says “The wiping is a dispensation (rukhṣa)[61] for he who covers his two legs with khuffayn.”[62] He then goes on to say, “If there was a tear in the khuff, and a sock is covering the foot, It is not our verdict that for him is the wiping upon it (i.e. the khuff). Because the khuff is not a sock (jawrab). Because if it is abandoned, that wearing other than the khuff, a sock, some of his two legs have been mired.”[63] Shāfiʿī then says, “For if you adorn the khuffayn by one thing different than it, but was in its meaning, wipe over it and those are all of them made from cow hide, camel hide, wood, but most are made from goat hide.”[64] In the Mudawwana, there is a small passage which says, “Mālik used to say regarding the two socks that on the sole of them there is leather stitching and the tops of them leather stitching that they may be wiped upon. [Ibn al-Qāsim] said, ‘then he retracted’ and said, ‘they are not wiped upon.’”[65] In one instance Shaybānī asks Abū Ḥanīfa, “What is the predicament of the sock that it cannot be wiped upon, and the galoshes that they can be wiped upon?” Abū Ḥanīfa replied, Because if their bottom is tanned-leather, then it takes the place of the khuff.”[66]  Shāfiʿī’s, al-Aṣl’s and the Mudawwana’s passages tells us a great deal about how the khuffayn were conceptualized and what materials they were crafted from. The khuffayn appear to be of a more general meaning perhaps, as I propose, being translated as moccasin boots. There is one report, found in Shamāʾil Muḥammadiyya by Abū ʿĪsā Muḥammad ibn ʿĪsā at-Tirmidhī (9th century), showing, perhaps, that the Abyssinians also knew this footwear. Tirmidhī says:
 عن بريدة أنّ النجاشيَّ أهدى للنّبيَّ صلى الله عليه وسلّم خفّين أسودين ساذجين فلبسهما ثُمّ توضّأ ومسح عليهما.[67]
Reported from Burayda that the Negus gifted the Prophet ﷺ two simple black boots. He wore them, then made ablution and wiped upon them.   
This narration shows us that the khuff was, likely, known in Abyssinia, but that they differed in construction and color. The topic of the moccasin boots remained an important one from the early period onward as it marked what religious orientation one had, it facilitated ease of travel and ease of daily life. Water is a precious commodity, so conserving it, and making ease in ablution appeared to have kept the topic of the moccasin boots at the forefront of people’s minds.
            In the latter period from the 11th century onwards, the legal discussions of the khuff become more intricate and detailed (abstractly) getting into the finer nuances of what materials can or cannot be used and what shape or length the moccasin boots must be. The khuffayn are even mentioned in the smallest of treatises, such as Matn al-Ghāya wa al-Taqrīb[68] by the 11th century Persian Shāfiʿī jurist Abū Shujāʿ, showcasing their importance in early Islamic ritual law. It is also notable that the The 12th century Central Asian Ḥanafī jurist, Burhānudīn al-Marghīnānī, informs us that Shāfiʿī did not accept wiping over galoshes saying, “There is no substitute for a substitute.”[69] Burhānudīn al-Marghīnānī then goes on to say, “It [the galosh] is a substitute for the foot, not for the khuff.” Al-Marghīnānī also tells us about what material is acceptable for the galoshes stating, “If the galoshes were made of cotton (kirbās), it is not acceptable to wipe upon them.”[70] He says that Abū Ḥanīfa’s position is that socks (jawrabayn) cannot be wiped upon unless they are leather (mujallad) or soled with leather (munaʿʿal).[71]
            The 13th century Ḥanbalī jurist Ibn Qudāma wrote a series of books to take students from the very beginning of Islamic jurisprudence to the very end. He wrote 5 books each more advanced than its predecessor. For the very beginner he wrote ʿUmdatul-Fiqh, which contains a notable section on the khuffayn and jarmūqayn even including within it wiping over the turban and cast/splint.[72] The 5th, and most advanced book, that Ibn Qudāma wrote is the comparative fiqh work al-Mughnī. The Mughnī, a commentary on Khiraqī’s Mukhtaṣar fī al-Fiqh, has an interesting passage referring to the maqṭūʿ (cut-one). Khiraqī says, “Do not wipe except upon the khuffayn or what takes the place of them such as the maqṭūʿ or what is similar to it that which exceeds the two ankles.”[73] Ibn Qudāma then goes on to explain the commentary that the maqṭūʿ “is the shortened shinned khuff.”[74] He then goes on to have a detailed discussion about what different jurists of the past have said about the maqṭūʿ, but what I find significant here is that this unequivocally means that they understood the khuffayn to be boots, and that the standard khuff included a full shin to it.
            The 14th century jurist ʿAbdullah an-Nasafī also has a section on the khuffayn in his treatise Kanz ad-Daqāʾiq, where he mentions also the jarmūqayn, the leather socks, and soled socks, the thick socks, the impermissibility of wiping over turbans, and wiping over splints/casts.[75]  The 14th century book ʿUmda as-Sālik by Aḥmad an-Naqīb al-Miṣrī states that one of the conditions of the khuff is that it is “preventing penetration of water.”[76] Khalīl Ibn Isḥāq al-Jundī, a 14th century Mālikī jurist, writes in his Mukhtaṣar Khalīl that the khuffayn must be “made of leather on the dorsal (top) of it, and sole of it.”[77] One notable phenomena is that any book of Mālikī jurisprudence smaller than Mukhtaṣar Khalīl is enigmatically devoid of any mention of the khuffayn such as Mukhtaṣar al-Akhḍarī[78] or Murshid al-Muʿīn,[79] unlike that the other three schools of jurisprudence who almost always included a section on the khuffayn. Perhaps for Mālikīs, the praxis was so ubiquitous that it warranted no mention, or it could be the opposite where the praxis was nearly non-existent. In later Ḥanbalī treatises, wiping over the thick sock begins to be more prominent such as in the mukhtaṣar Zād al-Mustaqniʿ by the 16th century jurist Mūsā al-Ḥajjāwī al-Ḥanbalī, where he says, “From the khuff and thick sock and what is like them.”[80]
            The conditions of wiping over the khuff start to be come more codified and elucidated in books during and after the 14th century; perhaps, due to the fact that footwear was changing. One of the most detailed discussions on this was found in Marāqī al-Falāḥ by the 16th century Egyptian jurist Ḥasan ash-Shurunbulālī. He says, “Stipulating on the validity of wiping upon the khuffayn is seven conditions. First, they are worn after washing the two feet. They are worn before the perfect ablution, if he completes it before reaching a nullifier for ablution. Secondly, they cover the two ankles.”[81] He then goes on to say, “Thirdly, The possibility of walking continuously in them (i.e. the khuffayn). The dispensation is rendered lost because the non-existence of it’s condition, and it is continuous walking. So it is not accepted to wipe upon a khuff made from glass, wood, or iron.”[82] This is a divergence from Shāfiʿī who allowed the use of wood as previously noted. He continues, “Fourth, is both of them being free from a tear the size of three toes from the smallest of toes. Fifth, they must adhere to the legs without being tied up. Sixth, They prevent water from reaching the body. Seventh, that the forefoot remains being the size of at least three fingers from the smallest fingers. If he is missing the forefoot, he does not wipe upon his khuff even if the heel [of his foot] was present.”[83] The 17th century responsa collection commonly known as Al-Fatāwā Al-Hindiyya, which was commissioned by the Mughal empire, also adds more detail to previous literature regarding the khuffayn. It says, regarding the conditions of the khuff, that “He must be able to walk continuously in it, that it covers the two ankles, and covering what is above them is not a condition unless if wearing a khuff without a shin. It is accepted to wipe if the ankle was covered. He wipes on the leather sock (al-jawrab al-mujallad) and it is that which is affixed with leather as aforementioned and the bottom of it [affixed with leather].”[84] Sounding humorous to the modern ear, the responsa collection then goes on to state, “If two khuffs are worn, and one of the two galoshes are worn, it is acceptable for him to wipe upon the khuff which has no galosh upon it and upon the galosh. And wearing a khuff on top of another khuff is like the two galoshes.”[85] In what looks like a pejorative responsum to possibly a Mālikī inquirer, it states, “It is not accepted to wipe on the bottom [sole] of the khuff or its heel or its shin, or its sides or its ankles.”[86] Moreover, it says, “If there was a wide galosh and he could enter his hand inside it, wiping over the khuff is still not accepted.”[87] As strange as they may seem today, these were the important legal questions of their day regarding purification and footwear.
            The 19th century Ḥanbalī jurist Mūsā al-Qudūmī an-Nābilusī gives us seven conditions for wiping over the khuffayn in his small treatise Al-Ajwiba Al-Jalīya fī Al-Aḥkām Al-Ḥanbalīya (The Obvious Questions Regarding The Verdicts of the Ḥanbalīs) where he states, “Wearing them after the perfect purification (ṭahāra) with water, they cover the obligatory area, it is possible to walk in them according to custom, they remain firmly in place by themselves, they are permissible (mubāḥ), they are made from a pure material, and that they cover skin (i.e. not transparent).”[88] The largest and most encyclopedic book in the Ḥanafī madhhab to date is commonly known as Ḥāshīyat Ibn ʿĀbidīn written by the 19th century Damascene Ottoman Jurist Muḥammad Amīn Ibn ʿĀbidīn and within the book there is over thirty pages regarding the khuffayn, but one passage right in the beginning of the chapter struck me as a modern reader. He mentions the modern shoe. He says, “The Legal definition of the khuff is that it covers the two ankles and most of it is made from leather or the likes of it. The condition of wiping on it is three matters. First that is was made to cover the obligatory area of washing the foot and ankle, or there is a decrease of it (i.e. the khuff) smaller than the preventing tear (i.e. smaller than the three smallest toes), so it is acceptable [to wipe] upon the shoe (zarbūl) if it is tied, unless the space of three toes are apparent. The jurists of Samarkand allowed covering the two ankles with a bandage [if the shoes did not cover the ankles, they could be augmented with bandages].”[89] This clearly demonstrates that foot-gear not only was changing but that jurists were still re-examining their own tradition to fit new scenarios. In other words, this was a discursive tradition actively engaged in historical genealogy to solve novel problems – critiquing their ritual praxis.[90] As modernity characterized by industrialization and globalization emerged, the traditional khuff lost practical prominence, and the contemporary shoe and sock became the predominant footwear people were concerned with.  
            There are four distinct movements we find amongst Sunnis in our contemporary time. Jonathan Brown calls them the Islamic Modernists, the Modernist Salafists, the Traditionalist Salafists, and the Late Sunni Traditionalists.[91] These for categorizations are not perfect, but help us to understand, generally, Islamic thought in our time. The Islamic Modernists were most notably Qur’anists accepting the criticism of hadiths by Orientalists like Muir and Goldziher. Most of them rejected all hadiths, except for a minority that held mutawātir hadiths would be considered.[92] Islamic Modernists, therefore, most likely would not concern themselves with wiping on the khuffayn since it is based in a hadith, except for those who considered mutawātir hadiths.
            The khuffayn, as mentioned previously, is established by a mass transmission (mutawātir hadith). One of the notable features of the Salafist Modernists is that they did not hold aḥād hadith transmissions (i.e. not mutawātir) to be theologically binding. Muḥammad ʿAbduh is famous for saying, “Whoever feels comfortable with them can believe in them. But none can be forced to believe in them or be declared an unbeliever for rejecting them.”[93] Thus, the Salafist Modernists most likely would have taken into consideration the theological and legal implications of the mass transmitted hadith regarding the khuffayn.
            Despite usually rejecting weak (ḍaʿīf) hadiths for any matter, breaking with the practice of pre-modern Muslim scholars, the Traditionalist Salafists are most known for their elevation of hadiths with their most illustrative example being Muḥammad Nāṣir al-Dīn al-Albānī (d. 1999).[94] They are known for casting away the institutions of classical Islam and relying on hadiths as their ultimate source for interpreting the religion. Of their mainstays is using the aḥād hadith transmissions for both theology and law, and emphasizing the spirit of Ijtihād (the application of legal theory and legal re-evaluation).[95] When it comes to wiping over the khuff in the modern context, Traditionalist Salafists and Modernist Salafists are most known for allowing the wiping over modern cotton socks. As noted earlier, the Muslim scholars of pre-modernity generally did not allow this, saying, to the effect, that wiping over the boots was a dispensation for washing the feet as ordained in the Qur’an. A substitute (i.e. the khuff) cannot have another substitute, nor a dispensation (rukhṣa) have another dispensation, was their legal reasoning. The fashion in which the Modernist and Traditionalist Salafists maneuver their way around this legal precept is by saying that the aṣl (original) is the matn (text of the hadith) regarding the khuffayn and the substitute (badal) is the wiping over cotton socks.
            In America, from my ethnographic research, this type of legal reasoning has had a huge impact. People prefer ease and wiping over the sock is a lot easier than washing your foot in a sink at work/school/the mall, etc, especially when you are a Muslim minority in a Muslim majority country. Nobody wants to be the strange person caught with his foot in the sink. Performing an ablution in public has become a stigma and a taboo that American Muslims are quick to avoid if possible. Late Sunni Traditionalists, on the other hand, more or less, maintain all of the components rejected by the three previous groups mentioned above. Jonathan Brown says, “Late Sunni Traditionalists subordinate hadiths to the interpretive traditions of the Sunni schools of law and Sunni legal theory. Late Sunni Traditionalists affirm their total confidence in the classical method of hadith criticism; as al-Ghazālī says, ‘I do not know its equal in the history of human culture in terms of establishing principles for verification.’ They also, however, entrust jurists, not hadith scholars, with the ultimate authority in determining the authenticity and implication of a hadith.”[96] Late Sunni Traditionalism is famously known for not allowing the wiping over modern socks, but only the khuffayn as they were classically understood (as boots or leather socks). This is sometimes even explicitly mentioned like in Nuh Keller’s translation of ʿUmda as-Sālik where he says, “Not modern dress socks, which are not valid to wipe in any school, even if many are worn in layers.”[97] This is because many Late Sunni Traditionalist jurists stipulate that one must be able to walk one farsakh[98] without it tearing more than the size of the three smallest toes, and certainly modern socks do not fulfill this condition. Nuh Keller also says, “The footgear Muslims generally use for this (i.e. khuff) are ankle-high leather socks that zip up and are worn inside the shoes.”[99] Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee also translated the khuff as ‘boots’ every single time in his translation of Al-Hidāya.[100]
            In contradistinction, the Somali Traditionalist Salafist, Cusmaan Cali Faarax, in his book Fahamka Kitaabka Iyo Sunnada, reveals to us quite succinctly the Traditionalist Salafist approach. The Somali Jurist’s section in the book regarding the khuff is titled as, “The wiping [on] the two khuffs, shoes, and socks.” He explains in this chapter that if one wears a sock, shoe, or khuff, that he may wipe over them instead of washing his feet. He quotes a hadith evincing the practice of wiping over the khuff, and a second hadith evincing the practice of wiping over socks and sandals. He goes on to state that the some of the ʿUlamāʾ stipulated the condition of the khuff being water proof or reaching the ankles unlike sandals, but he goes on in a patronizing tone to say that the previous Muslim scholars were completely wrong, and that there is no evidence in Qur’an or the hadith for such stipulations. Thus the stronger opinion is to ignore those stipulations thus allowing the wiping over shoes and socks.[101]
Interestingly enough, another change that I have witnessed among Muslims in the United States is that the leather sock khuff is being replaced with waterproof hiking socks, most notably Dexshell brand water-proof socks. Responsa were issued regarding their permissibility to be used as a khuff, one stating “We have examined and physically tested the four models of the Dexshell socks referred to in the question. After conducting a durability test on them by walking the necessary three Shar’ī miles, as well as conducting a water resistance test and a test to ascertain whether the socks are able to stand on the legs without being fastened or tied, we are satisfied with the results and deem them to be fit for Masah (wiping) during Wudhu (ablution). Hence, it is permissible to use them as alternatives to leather socks.”[102] Dexshell Inc who makes waterproof clothing for outdoor activities became privy to the fact Muslims started buying their products en masse and even came out with a model called “Dexshell Wudu.”[103] Despite not allowing the wiping over thin cotton socks, Late Sunni Traditionalists have embraced Dexshells. These examples perfectly highlight the current polemics regarding the khuffayn, which takes place predominantly between the Late Sunni Traditionalists and Traditionalist Salafists. Like echos of the past, this ritual is more than a mere ritual, but a marker of religious affiliation.
‘Ritual’ much like ‘Religion’ is impossible to define in an objective matter of fact manner. Durkheim would have us believe (pun intended) that Religion is inherently “eminently social.”[104] He would believe in the dichotomy between Theology and Ritual, and also the Sacred and Profane.[105] But is there such a thing as capital R Religion or capital R Ritual? Religion (Sacred) juxtaposed with Secularity (Profane)?  Theology (Creed) delineated from Ritual (Rites)? I find these dichotomies not useful in analyzing Islamic praxis.
In early medieval vocabularies of Christian and Islamic texts, there is no such indications of such contradistinctions and juxtapositions. Talal Asad – via three of his works – shows that Secularity and Religion are mere modern constructs unique to Occidental history, particularly of the Enlightenment.[106] Asad demonstrated that the English word ‘ritual’ used to delineate a certain genre of books that were prescriptive in the order and manner in which religious ceremonies and services were to be preformed and differed based on which particular church, diocese, or order the book came from.[107] According to Jonathan Z. Smith, It was the renaissance protestant thinker, Huldrych Zwingli (16th century), who came up with the ritual/myth dichotomy, the idea that rituals are always symbolic in nature, and that Ritual was nothing but mere “naked and bare Signes,”
“bare ceremoniousnesse;” “it is onlie a ceremonie.”[108] This Protestant-polemic against Catholicism led Ritual “to be classed with superstition (shallow, unreasoning action) or with habit (a customary, repetitive, thoughtless action).”[109] In the early 20th century we see the first ever entry in the Encyclopedia Britannica that makes ritual, in practical terms, synonymous to ‘rite,’ which were previously separate uniquely defined, albeit complementary, terms.[110] In other words, ritual is no longer a script, but a type of practice or routine behavior that symbolizes and/or expresses something, thus causing some sort of individual group consciousness and social organization.[111] Ritual also ceased to be solely delineated to Religion according to the 1910 Encyclopedia Britannica entry on Ritual.[112] In other words the English word ritual previously would have had a connotation of the Arabic word ‘fiqh.’ A ritual book would have been similar to saying a fiqh book. Put simply, ‘Ritual,’ in one sense, is a modern Protestant construct. “Religion, spirituality, identity and lifestyle are so interwoven so that, as with indigenous religions elsewhere, a division into sacred and secular is neither practical nor appropriate.”[113] Religion has been superimposed on the Arabic word dīn, which connotes ‘a way of life’ or ‘all of one’s deeds.’ Medieval Arabic had no connotation of the modern term ‘religion.’ Defining Ritual with a capital R becomes a near impossible task in academe, as ‘Religion’ and ‘Ritual’ manifest in so vastly numerous ways. ‘Ritual’ and ‘Religion’ are recognized by different scholars differently according to their subjective definitions of the two, whether consciously or unconsciously. “Religion is solely the creation of the scholars study.”[114] That being said, theories, models, and frameworks help academics in clarity, focus, and efficiency – as long as we can recognize their myopia. “[Religion] is created for the scholar’s analytic purposes by his imaginative acts of comparison and generalization. Religion has no independent existence apart from the academy. For this reason, the student of religion, and most particularly of the historian of religion, must be relentlessly self-conscious.”[115]
To keep things simple, I will define the act of wiping upon the khuff as a ritual, and will employ various approaches in Ritual Theory to elucidate different aspects of the khuff-ritual, and without the hubris of a grandiose theory for all of capital R ‘Ritual.’ As we have seen above, the ritual involves wearing a pair of khuffayn, which in the medieval period were most likely a moccasin boot. Conditions (shurūṭ) were also delineated as to what can function as a khuff in the abstract, which differed according to the various schools of ritual law (madhāhib), and even within schools of law according to various jurists. If the khuff (whatever that may be) was worn while in a state of minor ritual ablution (wuḍūʾ), then the ritual-practitioner may subsequently wipe upon the khuffayn with water instead of washing or wiping the entire foot (the tips of the toes up to or including the ankles). The ritual-practitioner would wash the head, arms (including the hands), wipe upon the head, and wipe the khuffayn – all of the minute details, such as sequence, area that must be washed/wiped, and method thereof, differed according to various ritual authorities (fuqahāʾ).
So now that we have a mere description of the ritual, what does it do and what does it mean? If we for a moment, look at the early Western theory that myth and ritual are interrelated, then what is the myth behind the khuffayn? Is it a ritual to commemorate or remember in the public consciousness the battle of Tabūk? Is Tabūk the myth? Is the later Sufi explanations of the inner spiritual dynamics of wiping upon the khuffayn the myth of the ritual?[116] Or should we look at the khuff as a mere component of wuḍūʾ, in which wuḍūʾ has some sort of myth? What is the myth of wuḍū? These are questions I do not find terribly useful as they have no clear answer in this case. 
Academics have all classified different rituals in very different ways to different aims, but if we take the classification of wiping upon the khuff to be a ritual of purity (Ṭahāra) as the fuqahāʾ have proposed, then what does it mean to be impure or pure? Durkheim refers to ritual impurities as unleashing “every profanation of sacred things” and he says that, “Any contact between them [impurities and purities] is considered the worst of profanations.”[117] It is a battle between the sacred and the profane, holy and sacrilegious, divine and diabolical. But Durkheim makes an excellent observation that “even as these two aspects of religious life oppose each other, they are closely related.”[118] The fact that one must try to abstain from impurities implies there is some sanctity to forbidden things. Impure things can evoke disgust and horror (i.e. the Lacanian ‘Real’), but “there is a certain horror in religious respect, particularly when it is very intense; and the fear inspired by malignant powers is not without a certain reverential quality.”[119] Even in Arabic, there are words which stem from the same Semitic root ḥ-r-m – the abovementioned Lacanian Signifying Chain – that show this ambiguity and interrelatedness: ḥarām (forbidden), ḥurma (sanctity), ḥaram (taboo), al-ḥaramayn (the two sanctuaries: Mecca & Madina), and so on. Thus impurities, which is ḥarām to intentionally mire oneself with them, are also associated ḥurma (sanctity) in the collective unconscious of ritual-practitioners while wiping upon their khuffs.[120]
J.Z. Smith says, “...there is nothing that is inherently sacred or profane. These are not substantive categories, but rather situational or relational categories, mobile boundaries which shift according to the map being employed.”[121] Things are sacralized by being ritualized and made profane be being deritualized. Therefore, “ritual is an exercise in the strategy of choice.”[122] What to exclude and what to allow in ritual can mean what to sacralize and what to banalize? Sunnīs try to banalize the Shīʿa’s wuḍūʾ by requiring washing the foot, and excommunicating those who do not believe in wiping upon the khuffayn; whereas, the Shīʿa and Ibāḍīs banalize wiping upon the khuff calling it a bidʿa (innovation), and not requiring the washing of the feet, only wiping. We saw how Qaḍī al-Nuʿmān rendered prayer behind the person who wiped over his khuffayn as invalid, thus banalizing the ritual prayer of the individual being led in prayer. The Ibāḍīs and Shīʿa considered it a part of creed, “we believe (naʿtaqidu) that wiping upon the khuffayn is not acceptable (ghayr jāʾiz),” thus banalizing wiping upon the khuffayn and prayer thereafter.[123]
What the above banalizing polemics indicate is that the khuffayn ritual communicates, or embodies a concept of self-identity, a symbolic representation of the Freudian Ideal-Ich (ideal-ego) by which we construct our ideal self that we would like to be – e.g. the ideal ritual observing Sunni. Then we have the Ich-Ideal (ego-ideal) which is the agency we try to impress with our ideal-ego’s image – God’s gaze, fellow Sunnīs’ gaze, demonstrating Sunnī prowess to Shīʿī observers, etc. Thirdly, there is the Über-Ich (superego), which is the ego-ideals obverse counterpart that is much more punishing, sadistic, and even vengeful – the punishing Law, God’s punishment, societal chastisement, Sunnī defeat by the sectarian ‘other’ and so on.[124]  Identity “...is a concept which embodies our sense of uniqueness as individual beings and as members of groups sharing values and beliefs.”[125] We examine our own identity “when confronted with uncertainty… when one is unsure where one belongs.”[126] Moreover, dominant groups in society try to “impose single definitions on such domains as [religion], sexuality, race, ethnicity, age, disability, and class.”[127] How can we realize ourselves without recognizing the ‘other’ in relation to us? Sunnī,  Ibāḍī and Shīʿī are all identites, which are “socially, historically and culturally constructed.”[128] “Language and other cultural codes are central to our internal identity as well as to our sense of belonging or our collective identity.”[129] Ritual can be easily seen as a ‘cultural code’ that communicates identity. Certainly the loaded identities Sunnī,  Ibāḍī and Shīʿī are political just as much as they are ‘religious.’ I would call them macro-identities because they encompass far more than one domain like ‘religion.’ Identity has long been thought by anthropologists of Law to be conceived around, in response to, or in opposition to the law, and a crucial aspect of identity formation.[130] Our own identity construction is based upon our individual and collective notion of the ‘other.’ We are alienated by the Symbolic realm – a language that functions like a living machine and we must organize and channel our needs and pleasures to fit into socially ‘acceptable’ modes that the ‘others’ dictate upon us. Moreover, we can superimpose our desire onto the ‘other’ and thus making it the Other’s desire. “What does God want from me ethically and ritually?” “What God wants for me, I want for myself whether consciously or unconsciously and now I identity with that system.” According to psychoanalysis, there is always an ‘Other’ within us (i.e. the unconscious).[131] “My relation with myself is constructed ‘from the outside.’ I learn who I am because others tell me.”[132] The unconscious parts of our identity allow such rituals as wiping on the khuffayn to be passed down even if consciously regarded as irrational: “I know very well that wiping over the khuffayn is illogical, but...[this is how I unknowingly express my identity]” Ah yes, the Lacanian Fetishist-Disavowal.[133]
“...Adherence to or rejection of particular religious or spiritual views” is a part of identity, which is “directly related to discourses of power.”[134] Fiqh, discourse about Islamic ritual, is a regime of thought and a discourse of power that “influence social reality, through schemes of classification in different periods of time” and “produce highly influential discourses which construct very different views of individual and collective identity.”[135] Blain says, “everyday gestures [like rituals] may become political acts.”[136] Ritual practitioners “at times they see themselves as political players, challenging establishment rules or conventional interpretations.”[137] As we know from history, the Umayyad and Abassid dynasties both suppressed the Ibāḍīs and Shīʿīs and were known to prefer Sunnī jurisprudence appointing often Sunnī jurists. In that sense the political power was often in the hands of the Sunnīs and Muʿtazilites to the exclusion and oppression of Ibāḍīs and Shīʿīs. Arguably the Sunnīs dictated the discourses of power, especially that of Islamic ritual law (until the 10th century politically), whereas others challenged the establishment rituals and conventional interpretations of Islamic ritual law, thus engaging in ritual critique. “The association of ritual with tradition is so pervasive that many practitioners and theorists consider ritual a primary means of resisting change and maintaining the status quo. Ritual is construed as a means of constructing the present on the basis of a heavily mythologized past treated as the generative model with which people wish to remain in contact.”[138] Perhaps in this view, Sunnīs, via wiping upon the khuffayn, wanted to maintain a status quo where the present bases itself upon the mythologized past of the time of the Prophet (i.e. the battle of Tabūk), which espoused the political values of the first four Caliphs, and that of the Umayyads. “Ritual actions are sometimes used to ensure that treasured persons or paradigmatic historical events are not forgotten. Rituals are devices for hanging on to values, making sure they are honored.”[139] It is a ritual which espouses the belief in the mutawātir transmission (i.e. Sunnī textual criticism). Whereas, for Ibāḍīs and Shīʿīs, ritually rejecting this ritual embodied their shared revolutionary values, having stood up to nepotism, corruption, and discrimination through resisting the Umayyad and Abassid empires. Rejecting wiping over the khuffayn for Ibāḍīs and Shīʿīs could have aimed to maintain the mythologized polity as a pristine egalitarianism for Ibāḍīs and a divinely guided Imamate for Shīʿīs.
Any historian of human thought will tell you that epistemologies change, political circumstances change, culture changes, and the normative changes. Rituals also may have to change outwardly to maintain the values they allegedly represent. “For rituals to conserve effectively, they themselves may have to change. Changing may be the most effective way to keep things the same.”[140] If we look at the minor ablution, it takes human energy to preform, and it takes precious water, which are very ‘Real’ in the Lacanian sense. There can be traumatic ritual costs, which left unaddressed can cause collective psychosis. In protecting an ‘old’ ritual, the social (Symbolic) and physical (Real) environment must be considered. “...so rituals, like other human activities are in constant need of repair.”[141] In order for the minor ablution to be fully practical given all circumstances the practitioner finds oneself in, it must then have dispensations in order to fully preserve itself. Therefore, for Sunnīs wiping upon the khuffayn while traveling, on a military expedition, or simply a resident, is a conservatory action. Wiping over the khuffayn rather than performing minor ablution conserves water, time, bodily energy, one’s identity and the power that is possibly given by the performance of that ritual. Thereby, avoiding psychosis and maintaining bodily health.
But in ritual preservation there is not mere action, but a counteraction to some accidental environmental factor. “Rituals are rendered traditional by constant microchanges, but when changes occur in sufficient volume or frequency, participants may be forced to recognize that their rituals are in fact dying or need reinventing.”[142] The various conditions to what exactly makes a khuff, and allows wiping upon it may be considered micro-changes as they were hashed out by jurists and applied to new footwear. However, in the contemporary era, the wiping upon the leather sock was likely dying or in need of reinvention. Therefore, jurists saw the need to transform the khuff into the shoe augmented with bandages, dexshell water-proof hiking socks or simply the modern cotton sock. This transmutation of the ritual is an act of conserving the abovementioned values that lay beneath the surface of the khuff.
The ritual wiping upon the khuffayn can arguably be done (abstractly) an infinite amount of times per day, definitely five times for each prayer in Islam, and certainly once a day seems to be no stretch of the imagination. In other words, wiping upon the khuffayn is a ritual that has the potential to have a lot of redundancy, a lot of repetition. Ritual can function as a reminder, as a break from ‘normal’ acts throughout the day. This is part of the reason Freud called ritual neurotic or obsessive.[143] Ritual fills in the void of the mundane, acts as the Lacanian objet petit a for the place that Paradise might normally take in the mind of a believer.[144] A ritual practitioner my begin to desire performance of the ritual itself and lose track of the ultimate goal: Paradise.[145] Lacan explains that the drive’s actual purpose is not its goal (i.e. Paradise), but rather its aim (i.e. the ritual that gains God’s permission to enter paradise).  The drive who’s goal is Paradise and who’s aim is ritual repeated in a closed circuit is the psychoanalytic approach to Ritual. For Lacan, the real source of enjoyment was this closed circuit where the drive’s ultimate purpose is to reproduce itself as drive and formulate the goal. This closed circuit constantly reminds the ritual practitioner of their identity numerous times a day. Rituals of purity, and prayer are the most oft repeated rituals Muslims arguably do, and they are also the most embroiled in differences of a sectarian nature in Islam. Rarely are rituals morally neutral, and thus have the capacity to be sectarian, even causing sectarian violence.[146] “Rituals are ways of knowing; they imply an epistemology as surely as they imply a politics or economics.”[147] They show the undergirding legal theory, which differs from legal school to legal school, and sectarian allegiance.
Importantly, I consider the khuff-ritual as predominantly reflexive and referential to the self. When ritual-practitioners wipe over the khuff they may contemplate who they really are, who they aspire to be, and enable bystanders to view their sectarian afilliation. Wiping upon the khuffayn, or the ritual of rejecting it, is “self-knowledge that situates individuals within collectives.”[148] Ritual has ontological components to know what is really real and what really matters (in the Symbolic realm); ritual-practitioners come to think of themselves as actual Sunnīs as they wipe upon their khuffs, actual Shīʿīs as they wipe upon their feet while rejecting the khuffayn, etc. Ritual creates interconnectedness via a group identity, despite the khuffayn being a largely individually practiced ritual. Interconnected to this interconnectedness is the fact that rituals can embody a worldview, and blind the practitioner to other worldviews, thus exacerbating the sectarian divide. Even though wiping upon the khuffayn is an individual ritual, it can still be preformed together – imagine a caravan of travelers (or an invading army) all stopping at the same well and making ablution, all wiping their khuffs together at the same time. Even if done separately, its a performance that others view, and fosters a sense of community, purpose, and worldview. Preforming the ritual differently or being absent from the ritual also communicates something, that you are possibly not part of the ‘community,’ school of Islamic law, military or sect. Thus, much like the prayer and other aspects of purity, the ritual of wiping upon the khuffayn or rejecting it, primarily functions Symbolically as a sign of one’s doctrinal allegiance.
However, Catherine Bell has always remained skeptical of this approach to ritual. Like belief, ritual can be understood in a plethora of ways and the mental states of individuals (i.e. their intentions) – so she claims – are, simply, beyond the reach of social analysis, despite ritual being described as ‘irreducibly social in nature’ and ritual systems like “belief systems are understood to be a matter of cultural worldviews or communally constructed ideological systems, quite beyond what a particular person may or may not hold true.”[149] Despite that, Bell also challenges the notion of belief and ritual being connected where “even the basic symbols of a community’s ritual life, can be very unclear to participants or interpreted by them in very dissimilar ways.”[150] However, she notes, despite a lack of similar interpretations amongst participants, rituals can promote social solidarity. Therefore, according to Bell, ritual may not communicate any sense of belief, yet still inculcate a social solidarity or perhaps a social identity. Moreover, as I have analyzed the texts of religious scholars above with prescriptions on how to believe, and how to perform ritual acts, this does not mean that all the laity would have accepted these notions.[151] Bell further says:
“Among the public at large, beliefs and opinions become increasingly incoherent with each other as the level of sophistication and education decreases. That is to say, beliefs or attitudes are increasingly less constrained by logic on the one hand while becoming more affected by local group interests on the other. The dissociation of logically related ideas proceeds down the social ranks to such an extent that it is impossible to find any significant public participation in belief systems found among elites.”[152]
 
 Their belief and practice may have differed quite significantly. That being said, this does not mean the khuff did not help create a self-identity. The factor for these juxtapositions or differently articulated theological stances may be due to slight differences in group identifications. Despite the fact that there are poorly educated adherents to certain creeds or coherent belief systems, they “still tended to have a ‘fairly accurate’ knowledge of concrete matters of ritual.”[153]  Regardless of the skepticism surrounding rituals relationship with belief, Bell still notes that the majority of scholarship does give evidence that rituals can inculcate beliefs both theological and political, as well as identity – reinforcing “the individuals attachment to the group.”[154]
            Identity is certainly a tricky subject to say the least, and another thorny aspect is the Freudian Phallus and its relationship to clinical hysteria. The Freudian Phallus is a symbol that represents our position within the Symbolic realm and society at large, which shapes our identity. A Phallus for instance can be the gown the judge wears and the gavel he pounds with, and when he wears that gown and pounds that gavel, his words are taken as the law! But the judge my wonder, such insignia are external and not part of my benevolent nature and as such they castrate me (i.e. limit the way I can behave), thereby creating a traumatic gap between who I feel I am and how I really function in everyday life. In other words, Symbolic castration happens by merely being caught in the Symbolic realm of human life. Perhaps the most famous case of this identity crisis – known in psychoanalytic theory as ‘hysteria’ – was Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazzālī who questioned his societal Phallus of being head scholar at the Niẓāmiyya so much that he went into hysterical psychosis manifesting in muteness that was only rectified when he broke from the predominant legalist ideology of his day to explore his true nature within the Sufi path. We are always asking ourselves: “What is there in me that makes you I am such and such? What do you see in me that causes you to desire me in that societal position?” We all have a little hysteria in us questioning: “How do I discern between what is my true desire from what others desire in/from me?” Do I wipe upon my khuffayn sincerely because of such and such? Or do I wipe upon my khuffayn because that is what others want from me? Does this Phallus, the khuffayn, which I adorn myself with really define me?[155]
            Lastly, Was it not the brutal ‘Real’ traumata of The Thirty Years' War that stripped religion from its position within political and public life, so as to be replaced by the secular in order to curb sectarian violence? Paradoxically, in Islamic civilization, it was the very public role of Ritual and Religion that curbs religious violence – thus, sublimating (Sublimierung) the violent sectarian urge into the innocuous ritual of wiping over the khuffayn or its creedal proclaimation. Is this not like how today we can brutalize our best friend or family member in a violent video game, but yet fully maintain our friendship afterwards? The very enactment of this violence in a ‘virtual’ space can actually reduce real-life tensions in the catharsis of a ritual. Is not the sectarian violence of The Thirty Years' War the traumatic kernel from which contemporary calls to tolerance and multiculturalism emerge?: A tolerance and multiculturalism that is sustained without true proximity to the ‘other,’ but rather with the racial self-segregation so prevalent in today’s cities such as Chicago. The ‘other’ was effervescent and ever-present in the ‘public-square’ of Islamic civilization’s cosmopolitan cities, so sectarian angst from the Id (das Es) and ego had to be repressed (verdrängt) and sublimated into ritual observance, which served the function of curbing violence – the same function secularity served in Western civilization. Akin to defeating one’s friend in video a video game, there is an obscene pleasure in wiping over your khuffayn.
            Whether or not you wipe on your socks, or wipe on your boots, or reject the wiping altogether, no one can deny the importance that the khuffayn has had on, not only theology and Islamic ritual, but also on sectarian identity formation. It does seem clear that, in the medieval period, the khuff likely was moccasin-boot rather than any other type of footwear. Early Muslim Scholars strongly emphasized the khuffayn for their sectarian implications, and for the legal dispensation they represented in conserving the minor ablution. The khuffayn became a normative practice amongst Sunnīs (a collective effervescence, perhaps, to use Durkheimian language), which Ibāḍīs and Shīʿīs sought to critique for all that it implicated. Undoubtedly, it is much easier to wipe over your boots or leather socks while traveling trying to conserve your water in the desert and to conserve your corporeal energy. Classical Jurists seemed concerned with the materials the khuff was made out of, or what the method of wiping may be. Whereas, contemporary Jurists were more concerned with whether shoes or socks counted as khuffs or not, and the sectarian implications (within the Salafi/Sufi divide) that they communicated. The most interesting phenomenon is how this tiny ritual within the larger paradigm of ritual purity became a significant marker for religious identity and group membership. “It would be difficult, if not impossible, to enact a ritual that did not communicate something to someone.”[156] One area of further inquiry could be looking into Muʿtazilite and Zaydī (Fiver) legal opinions on wiping upon the khuff to see whether they accepted or rejected the practice, and why. Furthermore, putting this study in a broader socio-poltical context in much more rigorous detail may elucidate how laity ritualists thought about the practice of wiping upon the khuffayn or lack thereof. If one could find literature regarding the khuffāf (khuff-makers), that would also provide be crucial data regarding the ritual and the make up of the original ritual item.  Moreover, further ethnographic fieldwork on contemporary practitioners of wiping upon the khuffayn and those who ritually reject wiping upon the khuffayn needs to be completed to gather more data to understand the practice as enacted today in various localities around the world.
 


[1]     Pun intended.

[2]     Abū Ḥanīfa and Muḥammad Shaybānī, The Kitāb al-Āthār Of Imam Abū Ḥanīfah: The Narration of Imam Muhammad Ibn al-Hasan Ash-Shaybani, ed. ‘Abdur Rahman Ibn Yusuf, Shaykh Muhammad Akram, Hafiz Riyad Ahmad al-Multani and Safira Batha, trans. Abdussamad Clarke (London, UK: Turath Publishing, 2008).

[3]     Mālik ibn Anas, Al-Muwaṭṭaʾ of Imām Mālik ibn Anas: Arabic & English, ed. And trans. Aisha Abdurrahman Bewley (Norwich, UK: Diwan Press Ltd., 2014);  Mālik ibn Anas and Muhammad Bin al-Hasan Ash-Shaybani, The Muwatta of Imam Muhammad: The Muwatta of Imam Malik ibn Anas in the narration of Imam Muhammad ibn al-Hasan ash-Shaybani, ed. Yahya Batha, Mufti Zubair Ismail Bayat, Uthman Ibrahim-Morisson, Shaykh Sulaiman Gani, Abdassamad Clarke, and Safira Batha, trans. Mohammad Abdurrahman and Abdassamad Clarke, and Dr. Asadullah Yate (London, UK: Turath Publishing, 2010), which I will refer to as The Muwatta of Shaybani.

[4]     Muḥammad ibn Idrīs ash-Shāfiʿī and Majid ud-Dīn Ibn Athīr, ash-Shāfī fī Musnad ash-Shāfiʿī, ed. Aḥmad Bin Sulaymān and Yasir Bin Ibrāhīm Abu Tumaym (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: Maktabat ar-Rushd, 2005), Vol 1.

[5]     Ahmed El-Shamsy, The Canonization of Islamic Law: A Social And Intellectual History (New York City: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

[6]     Muḥammad ibn Idrīs ash-Shāfiʿī, Al-Umm, ed. Dr. Muḥammad Ibrāhīm al-Ḥafnāwī (Cairo: Dār al-Ḥadīth, 2008), Vol 1; For a detailed description on  Al-Umm’s attribution to Imam ash-Shāfiʿī, see: Ahmed El-Shamsy, “Al-Shāfiʿī’s Written Corpus: A Source-Critical Study,” https://www.academia.edu/2058064/Al-Sh%C4%81fi%CA%BF%C4%AB_s_Written_Corpus_A_Source-Critical_Study  (accessed November 20, 2017)

[7]     Abū Ḥanīfa, Kitāb al-Āthār, 7.

[8]     Mālik ibn Anas,  Al-Muwaṭṭaʾ of Imām Mālik ibn Anas, 27;  Mālik ibn Anas and Muhammad Shaybani,  The Muwatta of Shaybani, 63-64

[9]     Ash-Shāfiʿī, ash-Shāfī fī Musnad ash-Shāfiʿī, 1:268.

[10]   Ash-Shāfiʿī,  Al-Umm, 1:205-206. This wording is also found in Abū Dawūd under Kitāb aṭ-Ṭahāra: bāb al-masḥ ‘alā al-khuffayn; Imâm Hâfiz Abu Dawud Sulaiman bin Ash'ath, English Translation of Sunan Abu Dawud, ed. Hâfiz Abu Tâhir Zubair 'All Za'I and Abü Khaliyl, trans. Yaser Qadhi (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: Maktaba Dar-us-Salam, 2008), 103. 

[11]   I have left out the full chain of narrators for the sake of brevity.

[12]   All translations are my own unless otherwise stated

[13]   Tabūk was a battle between the Muslim army and Byzantium on 630 C.E.

[14]   Al-Bukhārī, notably ḥadīth #363, 1:245; Al-Imām Muslim Ben al-Ḥajāj Al-Naysābūri, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim: The authentic hadiths of Muslim With full arabic text, 2nd ed., trans. Muḥammad Mahdi Al-Sharif (Beirut, Lebanon: Dar Al-Kotob Al-Ilmiyah, 2012), 1:324-326; ʿAbd ar-Razzāq bin Hammām aṣ-Ṣanʿānī, Al-Muṣannaf, ed. Ḥabīb ar-Raḥmān al-ʿAẓamī, 12 vols. (South Africa: al-Majlis al-ʿIlmī, 2009), 1:191.

[15]   Namely, Abū Dawūd, Tirmidhi, An-Nisāʾī, and Ibn Māja. 

[16]   Abū Jaʿfar Aḥmad aṭ-Ṭaḥāwī, The Creed Of Imam al-Ṭaḥāwī, ed. & trans. Hamza Yusuf (Berkeley, CA: Zaytuna Institute, 2007).

[17]   Ibid, 71; Hossein Modarressi, “Common Ibādī/Shī‘ite Legacy: Examples from the Ritual Law,” in Ibadi Jurisprudence: Origins, Developments and Cases, ed. By Barbara Michalak-Pikulska and Reinhard Eisener (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 2015), 111, 114n22.

[18]   Abū Ḥanīfa, Al-Fiqh al-Akbar Explained, ed. & trans. Abdur-Rahman Ibn Yusuf Mangera (London/Santa Barbara: White Thread Press, 2014); For a detailed analysis of the attribution of Al-Fiqh al-Akbar to Abū Ḥanīfa, see 24-31. 

[19]   Abū Ḥanīfa, Al-Fiqh al-Akbar Explained, 147. “wal-masḥ ‘alā al-khuffayn sunnatun.”

[20]   Abū Ḥanīfa, Al-ʿālim wa’l-Mutaʿallim, Al-Fiqh al-Absaṭ, Al-Fiqh al-Akbar, Risāla Abī Ḥanīfa, Al-Waṣiyya [a collection of the five books of Abū Ḥanīfa] ed. Muḥammad Zāhid al-Kawtharī, 1st ed (Cairo: Al-Maktaba al-Azhariyya li’l-Turāth, 2001), 2:184. Quoted in Abū Ḥanīfa, Al-Fiqh al-Akbar Explained, 155. Translation is from Abdur-Rahman Ibn Yusuf; Mutawātir is a technical term of ḥadīth criticism from within the tradition. It means that there are at least 10 or more fully different narrations of the particular ḥadīth in question from different places. In other words, as Muslims see it, it would be impossible for people to have gathered and conspired to fabricate the tradition/narration.   

[21]   Akmal al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Muḥammad al-Bābartī, Sharḥ ʿAqīda Ahl Al-Sunna wa al-Jamāʿa (Kuwait: Wizārat al-Awqāf, 1989), 123. Quoted in Aṭ-Ṭaḥāwī, 120n61; Translation is by Hamza Yusuf.

[22]   Aṭ-Ṭaḥāwī, 119n61.

[23]   Ibid, 199n61-120n61.

[24]   Abū Ḥanīfa, Al-Fiqh al-Akbar Explained, 155n161.

[25]   Devin J. Stewart, Islamic Legal Orthodoxy: Twelver Shiite Responses to the Sunni Legal System (Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 1998), 65, 67; Joseph Schacht, “Shīʿa Law” in The Origins of Muhammadan Jurisprudence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 262-268.

[26]   Arzina R. Lalani, Early Shīʿī Thought: The Teachings of Imam Muḥammad al-Bāqir (New York: I.B. Tauris in association with The Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2000), 117, 120-121.

[27]   Asaf A.A. Fyzee, trans., The Pillars of Islam: Da’a’im al-Islam of al-Qadi al-Nu’man, revised and annotated by Ismail Kurban Husein Poonawala (2002; repr., New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006), 136-137.

[28]   Modarressi, “Common Ibādī/Shī‘ite Legacy,” 111, 114n8.

[29]   Fyzee, The Pillars of Islam, 136-137.

[30]   Modarressi, “Common Ibādī/Shī‘ite Legacy,” 111.

[31]   Ersilia Francesca, “Ibāḍī Law and Jurisprudence” in The Muslim World, vol. 105 (The Hartford Seminary, 2015), 209–223.

[32]   Valerie Hoffman, “The Development of Ibadi Textual Tradition in the Arabian Peninsula.” Paper presented at the Middle East Studies Association’s Annual Meeting, San Antonio, TX, November 2018. 

[33]   Francesca, “Ibāḍī Law and Jurisprudence,” 219.

[34]   ʿAlī Muḥammad al-Ṣulābī, Fikr al-Khawārij wa al-Shīʿa (Cairo: Dār Ibn al-Jawzī, 2007), 66.

[35]   “O you who have believed, when you rise to [perform] prayer, wash your faces and your forearms to the elbows and wipe over your heads and your feet to the ankles.” This is the same verse that is said by some to have abrogated wiping upon the khuffayn, since it was allegedly revealed after the battle of Tabūk.

[36]   Ibn Rushd, The Distinguished Jurists Primer: Bidāyat al-Mujtahid wa Nihāyat al-Muqtaṣid, trans. Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee, 2 vols. (Reading, UK: Garnet Publishing, 1999), 1:14-15.

[37]   Modarressi, “Common Ibādī/Shī‘ite Legacy,” 111.

[38]   Ibid, 112.

[39]   Ibid, 112, 115n28-29.

[40]   Notably, [101:8], [43:54], [30:60], and [16:80].

[41]   Eric Winkel, Mysteries of Purity: Ibn al-ʿArabī’s asrār al-ṭahārah (Notre Dame: Cross Cultural Publications Inc., 1995), 115.  

[42]   Jacques Lacan, Écrits (Paris: Seuil, 1966), 11-16, 290-291.

[43]   Daniel Pick, Psychoanalysis (Oxford University Press, 2015), 43-44; Darian Leader & Judy Groves, Introducing Lacan (London: Icon Books Ltd, 2013), 36-42; I think it is commonly forgotten that Sigmund Freud started his career in the hard science of Neurology – his first work was on aphasia, the inability to comprehend or formulate language because of damage to specific regions of brain.  The same was for Lacan who studied Medicine & Psychiatry (treatment of the brain through drugs). Frankly, it is no surprise then that The Signifying Chain has been shown by contemporary Western science to have a neurological basis. Wernicke’s Aphasia being the case in point, which is caused by damage to the Wernicke’s part of the brain and causes fluent aphasia, where sentences are made fluently with connected words but the sentences are virtual meaningless links of words. In other words, words are stored closely together in one small part of the brain, Broca’s area by the temporal lobes, which are still intact after an injury to Wernicke’s area. However, when Broca’s area is damaged, patients struggle to find words to express themselves, but area able to maintain basic meaning such as: "Drive, store. Mom." meaning to say, "My mom drove me to the store today." The patient has an overall reduced lexicon and storage of homonyms and synonyms, which on the contrary remain intact with Wernicke’s Aphasia. Morphology, syntax, and the lexicon is stored in Broca’s area, whereas Wernickes area appears to store semantics. For Freud & Lacan, it is morphology, syntax, phonology, and the lexicon that structure the unconscious rather than the filler that is semantics, which fits into Noam Chomsky’s theoretical framework of a universal grammar that humans are born with (i.e. their unconscious). This is the intellectual background for the perfunctory every day usage of the term: “Freudian slip,” a slip of the tongue that reveals the unconscious. 

[44]   A variation is famously portrayed in the 2003 film 2 Fast 2 Furious; Also see Patrick J. Mahony, Freud and the Rat Man (Yale University Press, 1986).

[45]   Bruce Fink, The Lacanian Subject: Between Language and Jouissance (Princeton University Press, 1997), 8-9. “… the unconscious is nothing but a ‘chain’  of signifying elements, such as words, phonemes, and letters, which ‘unfolds’ in accordance with very precise rules over which the ego or self has no control whatsoever.”; I would posit that Semitic languages are particularly linked or chained together due to the tri-consonant root system by where 10 verb forms stem from one root thereby linking a vast array of verbs and nous together in a massive signifying super-chain not possible in any other linguistic family.

[46]   Abū Ḥanīfa, Kitāb al-Āthār, 9; aṣ-Ṣanʿānī, Al-Muṣannaf, 1:200.

[47]   Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Shaybānī, al-Aṣl, ed. Muḥammad Būynūkālin [Mehmet Boynukalın], 13 vols (Beirut: Dār Ibn Ḥazm, 2012).

[48]   al-Shaybānī, al-Aṣl, 1:41-42; Christopher Melchert, The Formation of the Sunni Schools of Law: 9th-10th Centuries C.E. (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 23-24, 39-40. Melchert also suggest that the Mudawwana resulted as a response to Asad’s collection. According to Melchert, Asad also became the Aghlabid governor of Sicily.

[49]   al-Shaybānī, al-Aṣl, 1:41-42. al-Nāsu ʿiyālun fī al-fiqhi ʿalā ʾAbī Ḥanīfata. 

[50]   Ibid, 1:43.

[51]   See Joseph E. Lowry, trans., Muhammad ibn Idris al-Shafi'i, The Epistle on Legal Theory (NYU Press, 2013).

[52]   Abū Ḥanīfa, Kitāb al-Āthār, 6-7.

[53]   Mālik ibn Anas and Saḥnun Muḥammad ibn Saʿīd, al-Mudawwana al-Kubrā, ed. Al-Sheikh Zakariyya Oumayrat (Beirut: Dar Al-Kotob Al-Ilmiyah, 2012), 1:144; Umar F. Abd-Allah Wymann-Landgraf, Mālik and Medina: Islamic Legal Reasoning in the Formative Period (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 401.

[54]   Mālik ibn Anas and Muhammad Bin al-Hasan Ash-Shaybani, The Muwatta of Imam Muhammad: The Muwatta of Imam Malik ibn Anas in the narration of Imam Muhammad ibn al-Hasan ash-Shaybani, 65.

[55]   Mālik ibn Anas, Al-Muwaṭṭaʾ of Imām Mālik ibn Anas: Arabic & English, 31.

[56]   Ibid, 30.

[57]   Umar F. Abd-Allah Wymann-Landgraf, 401.

[58]   Aḥmed Ibn Muḥammad al-Qudūrī, The Mukhtaṣar al-Qudūrī: A Manual of Islamic Law According to The Ḥanafī School, ed and trans. Ṭāhir Maḥmood Kiānī (London: Ta-Ha Publishers Ltd., 2012), 16.

[59]   Abū al-Qāsim al-Khiraqī, Mukhtaṣar al-Khiraqī, ed. Qāsim Darwīsh Fakhrū and Muḥammad Zahīr al-Shāwushī (Damascus: Manshūrāt al-Maktab al-Islāmī bidmishq, 1978), 12; Nimrod Hurvitz, “the Mukhtaṣar of al-Khiraqī and its place in the formation of Ḥanbalī legal doctrine” in Law, Custom, and Statute in the Muslim World. Studies in Honor of Aharon Layish, ed. Ron Shaham (Leiden: Brill, 2006).

[60]   Ash-Shāfiʿī,  Al-Umm, 1:205.

[61]   The rukhṣa is a legal term referring to the replacement of a commandment of Islamic law in its original force.  It is a “replacement with a less onerous alternative in cases of need or duress. Literally, rukhṣa means ‘facilitation’ or ‘alleviation.’ As a technical term in the discipline of uṣūl al-fiqh, it refers to a special dispensation from performing an obligatory act or from submitting to a prohibition, as a result of a mitigating circumstance (ʿudhr).” Quoted from Katz, Marion H., “ʿAzīma and rukhṣa”, in: Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE, Edited by: Kate Fleet, Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas, Everett Rowson. Consulted online on 23 November 2017 http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_ei3_SIM_0261, First published online: 2007, First print edition: 9789004161641, 2007, 2007-3.

[62]   Ash-Shāfiʿī,  Al-Umm, 1:207 line 20.

[63]   Ibid, 1:208 lines 1 and 2.

[64]   Ibid, lines 9 and 10.

[65]   Mālik ibn Anas,  al-Mudawwana al-Kubrā, 1:143 lines 18-20; Umar F. Abd-Allah Wymann-Landgraf,401.

[66]   Shaybānī, al-Aṣl, 2:72-73.

[67]  لاحظْ : باب ما جاء في خفّ رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلّم.
 

[68]   Abū Shujāʿ al-Aṣfahānī, The Ultimate Conspectus: Matn al-Ghāya wa al-Taqrīb,  ed. & trans. Steven Musa Woodward Furber (Islamosaic, 2012), 11-12. 

[69]   Burhānudīn al-Marghīnānī, Al-Hidāya Sharḥ bidāya al-Mubtadī, ed. Muḥammad Ṣallī Bayḍūn (Beirut: Dar Al-Kotob Al-Ilmiyah, 2000), 1:31.  “al-Badal lā yakūnu lahu badalun.” 

[70]   Ibid.

[71]   Ibid.

[72]   ʿAbdullah Ibn Qudāma, ʿUmdatul-Fiqh, ed. Aḥmad Muḥammad ʿAjawz (Beirut: al-Maktaba al-ʿAṣrīya, 2003), 16.

[73]   ʿAbdullah Ibn Qudāma, al-Mughnī, ed. Muḥammad ʿAbdul-Qādir ʿAṭā, 8 vols. (Beirut: Dar Al-Kotob Al-ilmiyah, 2008), 1:246.

[74]    Ibid. “al-maqṭūʿ huwa al-khuff al-qasīr al-sāq.”

[75]   ʿAbdullah an-Nasafī, Kanz ad-Daqāʾiq, ed. Rāshid Muṣṭafā Al-Khalīlī (Beirut: al-Maktaba al-ʿAṣrīya, 2010), 7-8.

[76]   Aḥmad an-Naqīb al-Miṣrī, Reliance of the Traveler: A Classical Manual of Islamic Law, ed. & trans. Nuh Ha Mim Keller (Beltsville, Maryland: Amana Publications, 1997), 69; Nuh Keller, an Alumnus of the University of Chicago, studied Arabic and philosophy and currently lives in Amman, Jordan. He is one of the major leaders, currently, in the Shādhilī Ṣūfī order. 

[77]   Khalīl Ibn Isḥāq al-Jundī and Muḥammad Bin Aḥmad Bin Ghāzī al-ʿUthmānī, Mukhtaṣar Khalīl wa maʿahu Shifāʾ al-Ghalīl fī Ḥalla Muqfali Khalīl, ed. Dr. Aḥmad Bin ʿAbdul-Karīm Najīb (Dublin, Ireland: Najeebawaih Manuscripts Centre, 2008), 152.  

[78]   ʿAbdur-Raḥīm al-Akhḍarī, Mukhtasar Al-Akhdari: The Fiqh of The Acts of Worship According to The Maliki School of Islamic Law, trans. Sidi Baye (Atlanta, GA: Fayda Books, 2014). 

[79]   Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdul-Wāḥid Ibn ʿAshir, Al-Murshid al-Muʿeen: The Concise Guide to The Basics of The Deen, trans. Dr. Asadullah Yate (Norwich, UK: Diwan Press, 2013).

[80]   Mūsā al-Ḥajjāwī al-Ḥanbalī,  Zād al-Mustaqniʿ fī Ikhtiṣār al-Muqniʿ, ed. Manṣūr Bin Yūnis al-Buhūtī (Beirut: Dar Al-Kotob Al-Ilmiyah, 1994), 10.   

[81]   Ḥasan ash-Shurunbulālī,  Marāqī al-Falāḥ Sharḥ Matn Nūr al-Iḍāḥ, ed. Naʿīm Zarzawr (Beirut: al-Maktaba al-ʿAṣrīya, 2005), 56 lines 2-4.     

[82]   Ibid, lines 22-24.

[83]   Ibid, 56 lines 5-6, 57 lines 1-4.

[84]   Muḥammad Bak al-Ḥusaynī, ed., Al-Fatāwā Al-Hindiyya Aw Al-Fatāwā Al-ʿĀlimkarīya (Beirut: Dār an-Nawādir, 2013), 32.   

[85]   Ibid.

[86]   Ibid.

[87]   Ibid.

[88]   Mūsā al-Qudūmī an-Nābilusī, Qaddūmi’s Elementary Ḥanbali Primer, ed. & trans. Joe Bradford (Origem Publishing, 2013), 29-30.

[89]   Muḥammad Amīn Ibn ʿĀbidīn, Ḥāshīya Radd al-Muḥtār ʿalā ad-Durr al-Mukhtār Sharḥ Tanwīr al-Abṣār, ed. Abū Bilāl Jamāl Bin ʿAbdul-ʿĀl (Cairo: ad-Dār al-ʿĀlimīya Li-an-Nashr wa at-Tawzīʿ, 2014), 1:433.         

[90]   For more on genealogy within the discursive tradition, see Talal Asad, Secular Translations: Nation-State, Modern Self, and Calculative Reason (NYC: Columbia University Press, 2018), 91-96.

[91]   Jonathan A.C. Brown, Hadith: Muhammad’s Legacy in the Medieval and Modern World (London: Oneworld Publications, 2016), 243.

[92]   Ibid, 244; I am using the transliteration of حديث used by Dr. Brown.

[93]   Ibid, 253.

[94]   Ibid, 256-257.

[95]   Ibid, 258.

[96]   Ibid, 262.

[97]   Aḥmad an-Naqīb al-Miṣrī, 69.

[98]   ~3 miles or 6km in modern measurements.

[99]   Aḥmad an-Naqīb al-Miṣrī, 68.

[100] Burhānudīn al-Marghīnānī, Al-Hidāya: The Guidance, ed. & trans. Dr. Imran Ahsan Khan Nyazee (Islamabad: Center For Excellence in Research, 2016), 1:79.

[101] Cusmaan Cali Faarax, Fahamka Kitaabka Iyo Sunnada, (Egypt: Dar Alsalam Printing, 2000), 86-88.

[102] Nabeel Valli, AbdulMannan Nizami, Asim Patel, “Are DexShell Socks permitted for doing masah in Wudu?” Ask Imam. http://askimam.org/public/question_detail/32025 (Accessed 11/3/18).  Also notice the distinct modern notions from Western scientific ‘testing.’

[103] Nabeel Valli, AbdulMannan Nizami, Asim Patel, “Are DexShell Socks permitted for doing masah in Wudu?:” “Wudhu Socks.” Wudu Gear. https://wudugear.com/shop/wudhu-socks/ (Accessed 12/14/18); Another similar product is called the “Smart Khuffz,” which is invented by Dr. Jörg Imran Schröter. Azhar University issued a responsum (fatwá) allowing the wiping over Smart Kuffz, see Schröter, Jörg Imran, “About us,” Smart Khuffz. https://smartkhuffz.com/about-us/ (accessed 5/9/21). 

[104] Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, trans. By Carol Cosman (Oxford University Press, 2001), 11.

[105] Ibid, 36.

[106] Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford University Press, 2003); Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993); Asad, Secular Translations.

[107] Asad, Genealogies of Religion,  56.

[108] Jonathan Z. Smith, To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual (The University of Chicago Press, 1987), 99-100.

[109] Ibid, 100.

[110] Asad, Genealogies of Religion, 56.

[111] Ibid, 57.

[112] Ibid.

[113] Jenny Blain, “Paganism” in Social Identities: Multidisciplinary Approaches, ed. By Gary Taylor and Steve Spencer (New York: Routledge, 2004), 162.

[114] Jonathan Z. Smith, Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (The University of Chicago Press, 1982), xi.

[115] Ibid.

[116] See Winkel, Mysteries of Purity, 98-125; Ibn ʿArabī, “Chapter 68: The Wiping Upon The Khuffayn” in al-Futūḥāt al-Makkīya, 9 vols. (Beirut: Dār al-Sādr, 1997), 1:411-417.

[117] Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, 304.

[118] Ibid, 305.

[119] Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, 305; Slavoj Žižek, Looking Awry (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992), 39-43.

[120] Žižek makes an intelligent observation where he demonstrates that the Lacanian ‘Real’ is not merely the ineffable non-symbolized kernel that traumatizes us due to its very unsymbolizastion, but in addition the Symbolic order can become the Real itself in the form of a Signifying Chain, especially when the Law is involved. Suddenly, words become acts, and the Symbolic falls into the Real.  The Real feeling of the khuff upon our skin, the water hitting the khuff and cooling it, the stares of the non-Sunnis, the camaraderie of a smiling co-ritualist, and so on.

[121] Smith, Imagining Religion, 55. Categories and boundaries shifting in the Symbolic order.

[122] Ibid, 56.

[123] Modarressi, “Common Ibādī/Shī‘ite Legacy,” 115n29.

[124] Leader & Groves, Introducing Lacan, 48; Pick, Psychoanalysis, 46-47; Slavoj Žižek, How to Read Lacan (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007), 80.

[125] Gary Taylor and Steve Spencer, “Introduction” in Social Identities, 1.

[126] Ibid.

[127] Ibid.

[128] Ibid, 2.

[129] Ibid, 3.

[130] Mark Goodale, Anthropology and Law: A Critical Introduction (NYC: New York University Press, 2017), 4-5, 24, 147-148.

[131] Fink, The Lacanian Subject, xi-xiii, 3-7.

[132] Leader & Groves, Introducing Lacan, 47.

[133] Žižek, How to Read Lacan, 84. Conscious disavowal paradoxically exists with ritual acts that embody belief. The classic examples of this kind of ideology are the notions of Marx’s commodity fetishism and electronic/paper money. We act as if we believe that money made of paper/bytes is actually worth the physical goods we buy with it and that commodities have special non-physical properties. Consumers believe that brand name products have some non-physical property that their generic counterparts do not. This commodity fetishism drives consumers into buying them at much higher rates than their physically identical generic counterpart. “I know very well that this dollar is worthless paper and there is not enough gold in Fort Knox to back up this currency, but…”

[134] Gary Taylor and Steve Spencer, “Introduction,” 4.

[135] Ibid.

[136] Blain, “Paganism,” 163.

[137] Ibid, 164.

[138] Ronald L. Grimes, The Craft of Ritual Studies (Oxford University Press, 2014), 312.

[139] Grimes, The Craft of Ritual Studies, 313.

[140] Ibid.

[141] Ibid.

[142] Ibid, 314.

[143] Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism (New York: Vintage Books, 1939), 117-118.

[144] Objet petit a is any object which sets desire in motion, especially the partial objects which define the drives. The drives do not seek to attain the objet petit a, but rather circle round it.

[145] Žižek, Looking Awry, 3-6.

[146] This is why many Twelvers have practiced dissimulation is some manner or another.

[147] Grimes, The Craft of Ritual Studies, 326.

[148] Ibid, 327.

[149] Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (Oxford University Press, 1992),182-183.

[150] Ibid.

[151] See Fernanda Pirie, The Anthropology of Law (Oxford University Press, 2013), 103-105. She notes that in order understand law (or ritual) one must know not only what the jurists scholars say, but also what the laity do in daily life as well as the formers’ relations with the polity.

[152] Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, 185; See the Lacanian Fetishist-Disavowal mentioned above.

[153] Ibid.

[154] Ibid, 186-187.

[155] Žižek, How to Read Lacan, 34-35.

[156] Grimes, The Craft of Ritual Studies, 318.