This is a lexical entry that brings together the technical meaning of this term across Shahrur’s various books and connects its multiple uses.
This entry belongs to the Shahrur glossary. For reading by theme, one may refer to Shahrur’s major themes and shared concepts.
The meaning in Shahrur
Al-abawayn are the two parents in their social and educational sense, not merely as a biological relation; they denote care, upbringing, sanctity, inheritance, and lineage as bonds that constitute the family and give it its moral and social dimension. In this way, the term goes beyond the meaning of parents as merely the cause of birth to the meaning of the relationship that forms the human being within the group.
Distinctions
- They differ from al-walidayn when these are meant in the biological sense alone; al-abawayn add the meanings of care, upbringing, and sanctity
- They are not intended to mean abstract individual fatherhood, but rather the family relationship as it carries lineage, inheritance, and social responsibility.
Occurrences in his books
- Drying up the Sources of Terrorism: al-abawayn differ here from al-walidayn, as they refer to care, upbringing, sanctity, inheritance, and lineage as social relations. Through this distinction, the author expands the meaning of family from mere biology to the social and moral structure surrounding the human being
What is adjacent to it and what differs from it
- Father and mother as social relations
- The ummah as a bond of unified conduct
- Religious and kinship belonging are measured by action and relationship
- Mutual recognition and multiple belonging create a community without contradiction
- The group is defined by conduct, language, or system
- Al-walidayn are biological, while al-abawayn are educational
- Multiple levels of belonging
- Defining destruction as final obliteration
- No contradiction between forms of belonging
- Shahrur - father