The Hanafi (Arabic: حنفي‎ Ḥanafī ) school is one of the four Madhhabs (schools of law) in jurisprudence (Fiqh) within Sunni Islam. The Hanafi madhhab is named after the Khurasani Iranian scholar Abu Hanifa an-Nu‘man ibn Thābit (Hijri: أبو حنيفة النعمان بن ثابت) (767 - 699CE /80 - 148 AH), a Tabi‘i whose legal views were preserved primarily by his two most important disciples, Abu Yusuf and Muhammad al-Shaybani. This is the most prominent among all Sunni Schools and it has the most adherents in the Muslim world. www.haqislam.org/imam-abu-hanifah

Among the four established Sunni schools of legal thought in Islam, the Hanafi school is one of the oldest and by far, the largest in parts of the world. It has a reputation for putting greater emphasis on the role of reason and being more liberal than the other three schools. The Hanafi school also has many followers among the four major Sunni schools. This is largely to its being adopted as the official madhab of The Abbasid Caliphate, the Ottoman Empire and the Mughal Empire. As such, the influence of the Hanafi school is still widespread in the former lands of these empires. Today, the Hanafi school is predominant in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, China as well as in Mauritius, Turkey, Albania, Bosnia And Herzegovina, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tatarstan, Bashkorkostan, North Caucasus Republics, and Ukrainian Crimea. It is also practiced in large numbers in other parts of Muslim world, particularly in parts of the Levant, Egypt, Iran and Iraq.

Zakir Abdul Karim Naik (Urdu: ذاکر عبدالکریم نائیک; born 18 October 1965) is an Indian public speaker on the subject of Islam and comparative religion. He is the founder and president of the Islamic Research Foundation (IRF), a non-profit organisation that owns the Peace TV channel based in Dubai, UAE. He is sometimes referred to as a televangelist. Before becoming a public speaker, he trained as a doctor. He has written two booklets on Islam and comparative religion. He is regarded as an exponent of the Salafi ideology; he places a strong emphasis on individual scholarship and the rejection of "blind Taqlid", which has led him to repudiate the relevance of sectarian or Madh'hab designations, all the while reaffirming their importance.

Zakir Abdul Karim Naik was born on 18 October 1965 in Mumbai, India. He attended St. Peter's High School in Mumbai. Later he enrolled at Kishinchand Chellaram College, before studying medicine at Topiwala National Medical College and Nair Hospital and later the University of Mumbai, where he obtained a Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery (MBBS). His wife, Farhat Naik, works for the women's section of the IRF.