The glossary gathers the technical meanings of concepts as they appear across Shahrur’s books. Its purpose is to show when Shahrur uses a term in its common meaning and when he shifts it to a specific meaning within his project.
Quick entries
- Shahrur’s major themes: reading the terms within broader axes
- Shared concepts: concepts that recur across more than one book.
- Conceptual relations: how a term connects to others: by distinction, foundation, or tension.
- Qur’anic evidence loci: places where the terms appear within the Qur’anic argument.
- Semantic distinctions: links between close words that Shahrur refuses to treat as synonyms.
Most frequent terms
- Islam — four books
- Faith — two books
- Occasions of revelation — two books
- Mother of the Book — two books
- Those vested with authority — two books
- Sovereignty — two books
- Freedom — two books
- Civil state — two books
- The Muhammadan message — two books
- Sunna — two books
- Polytheism — two books
- Testimony — two books
- The Firmest Handhold — two books
- Righteous action — two books
- The definitive — two books
Text, reading, and interpretation
- Occasions of revelation
- Mother of the Book
- Interpretive interpretation
- the Wise Revelation
- Semantic distinctions
- Tartīl
- Synonymy
- the Book
- report
- Analogy
- Lesson
- Qur’anic studies
- the Qur’an
- the Salafi reading
- the Qur’anic narrative
- Guardianship
- The definitive
- The ambiguous
- the Criterion
- the abrogating and the abrogated
- news
- the Remembrance
- the tongue of Quraysh
- the science of exegesis
Prophethood, message, and Sunna
- wisdom
- The Muhammadan message
- the messenger
- Sunna
- the messengerly Sunna
- the prophetic Sunna
- prophethood
- the prophet
- obedience to the messenger
- the station of messengerhood
- the station of prophethood
Religion and values
- excellence
- Islam
- Faith
- disavowal
- Hanifism
- sin
- fault
- the spirit
- evil deed
- polytheism
- testimony
- injustice
- The Firmest Handhold
- action
- Righteous action
- disbelief
- the word of common ground
- God
- what is right
Legislation and jurisprudence
- livestock
- consensus
- inheritance
- prohibition
- divorce
- the prescribed share
- jurisprudence
- heritage jurisprudence
- bequest
Politics and society
- Those vested with authority
- monism
- the community
- terrorism
- the age of ignorance
- mutual repulsion
- mutual acquaintance
- pluralism
- striving
- sovereignty
- freedom
- civil state
- the people
- consultation
- fighting
- nationalism
- citizenship
- covenant
- allegiance
- transnational allegiance
- national allegiance
Human, history, and existence
- Isra’iliyyat
- the human being
- history
- action
- decree
- destiny
- process
- witness
- poetry
- martyr
- becoming
- being
- knowledge
- objective existence
- destruction