Hassan Hanafi's attempt to contribute to the renewal of uṣūl al-fiqh (sources of Islamic jurisprudence) and to subject the revelation to critical methods has been a highly problematic issue on account of his  confused interpretation of the foundations of jurisprudence. His misunderstanding is most apparent in his interpretation of the term of ijmāʿ (scholarly consensus) in uṣūl al-fiqh. This study takes the term ijmāʿ as an example to discuss the problems of renewing uṣūl al-fiqh using Hanafi's approach. The research scrutinizes Hanafi's approach to ijmāʿ in light of other texts in uṣūl al-fiqh, in line with to their descriptive and critical methods. It concludes that Hanafi's conception of uṣūl al-fiqh is insufficient to achieve any renewal. Furthermore,  it will be shown that Hanafi sought to develop new terms for issues that the experts of uṣūl al-fiqh already discussed. Consequently the "renewal" pursued by Hanafi in uṣūl al-fiqh, was purely verbal, of little use to experts in uṣūl al-fiqh.