Answered by Shaykh Faraz Rabbani
What is the hanafi position on the tasbih. should we do it on our fingers or on the beads?
Walaikum assalam,
The tasbih is a means to do dhikr. One should do dhikr in the way that is most conducive to actually doing dhikr, and to maintaining one’s presence of heart with Allah.
The position of Wahhabis that using prayer beads is a bida is a bid`a in itself. All the schools of Sunni Islam allow it . The greatest hadith experts, including giants like Imam al-Nawawi, Imam Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani, Imam Badr al-Din al-`Ayni, and others all explicitly permitted the use of prayer beads. Same with great Qur’anic exegetes .If these people did not understand the Qur’an and Sunna, then who did?
The prayer bead’s permissibility is explicitly mentioned in Imam al-Haskafi’s Durr al-Mukhtar, and in the Hashiyas of Imam al-Tahtawi and Ibn Abidin. Imam Abdal-Hayy al-Lakhnawi has an excellent treatise on it, based on a shorter work by Imam al-Suyuti.
Some scholars actually say another consideration making it better to use prayer beads is to be different from the people of innovation
Wassalam,
Faraz Rabbani.