On this basis...

On this basis, it is necessary that the washing of the feet takes the place by the wiping." I say, as for the traditions on washing, you will know the view of the Imams of the Ahlul Bayt and their friends about it soon, God willing. As for his saying that the washing includes the wiping, this is a clear mistake, rather, they are two [separate] entities linguistically, according to custom and the ‘shari`a’. It is necessary to note that washing the feet cannot take the place of wiping them.

Imam al-Razi stood between two opposites; the contradictions between the fixed Qur'anic verse and, in his view, the authentic traditions; therefore, he confused himself by saying that the washing includes the wiping, and that it is closer to the most cautious [course] and that it takes the place of the wiping. [In doing this] he thought thereby that he combined the verse and the traditions. One who examines this defence of his will find him in confusion.

Had there not been a clear verse indicating the obligation of wiping on the feet, he would not have needed to make the washing take the place [of the wiping] so examine and contemplate carefully.

A group of the intelligent scholars of ‘fiqh’ (jurisprudence), and Arabic tread this path, amongst them was the jurist, and researcher Shaykh Ibrahim al-Halabi who studied the verse on the ‘wudhu’ in his book called "Ghaniyah al-Mutamla fi sharh maniyya al-musalli 'ala madhhab al-Hanafi." He said: "It (the feet in the aforementioned verse) has been recited by the seven [reciters] in the accusative, and the genitive cases; the famous opinion is [to recite] it in the accusative case, conjoined to `on your faces' and the genitive case is inserted on that word which is closest to it".

He (al-Halabi) said: "And the correct view is that the feet are conjoined to the head in the two recitations, [it can be recited in] the accusative due to the position in the sentence (as it is the object in the sentence) and they (the feet in the statement) can be recited in the genitive case due to the preposition." He continued: "That is because of the prohibition of the conjunction [of the feet] to ‘on your faces' because of the separation between the conjunction (`atf) and that which it is conjoined to (ma`tuf alayh) due to a foreign sentence (which is ‘wipe your heads')." He said: "And, the rule is that there should be no separation between the two (the conjunction and what it is conjoined to) by a word let alone by a sentence.