This chapter makes the case that Abu Hanifa’s relationship to politics and rulers was a key catalyst for the rise of discourses of heresy against him and, perhaps, the most consequential. Abu Hanifa’s alleged involvement with three rebellions flew in the face of a basic tenet of proto-Sunni traditionalist orthodoxy, namely, political quietism. It shows that politics and the state were implicated in evolving conceptions of orthodoxy and heresy, and how the growth of proto-Sunni traditionalism was in some ways fostered by political elites and representatives of the state.