قُلْ إِنَّنِى هَدَىٰنِى رَبِّىٓ إِلَىٰ صِرَٰطٍ مُّسْتَقِيمٍ دِينًا قِيَمًا مِّلَّةَ إِبْرَٰهِيمَ حَنِيفًا وَمَا كَانَ مِنَ ٱلْمُشْرِكِينَ
"Say: 'My Lord has guided me to a straight path: to an upright religion, the creed of Abraham, a ḥanīf. And he was not one of those who associate partners.'"
دِينًا قِيَمًا — the root ق-و-م: standing upright, in balance. The root was treated at al-Kahf 18/2 (qayyiman) and at al-Baqara 2/255 (al-Qayyūm).
حَنِيفًا — the root ح-ن-ف: to incline in one direction, to turn away from crookedness. The root was treated at al-Rūm 30/30 (ḥanīfan fiṭrata'llāh); I rely on that treatment.
And the verse's place in the sūra is worth recording: verses 74-83 had described Abraham's reasoning. Verse 161 gives the outcome of that reasoning as the name of a way.
I record this as my own reading, and its ground is the structure of the sūra: the passage that the sūra opened with Abraham looking at the star, the moon and the sun and seeing that all of them set, it binds up at the close by saying "his creed". And in between, the prohibitions and the shares that people invented themselves had been described — that is, what is set against the invented is a way one person found by his own reasoning.