This page includes four instances of the use of Āl ʿImrān 14 in Muhammad Shahrur’s books. In them, it appears as an entry point for understanding human desires and their place in human civilization. Its importance lies in the fact that it does not stop at description, but links the love of desires to the order of worldly life and the economy.
The Verse as Cited
Made alluring to people is the love of desires: women, children, heaped-up stores of gold and silver, branded horses, livestock, and cultivated land. That is the enjoyment of worldly life, while with God is the finest return.
Reader’s Answer
Question
How does Shahrur read the verse, “Made alluring to people is the love of desires,” in Āl ʿImrān 14, and what does he build upon it?
Shahrur reads the verse as an enumeration of the “principal human desires,” from which all other desires branch out. In the accompanying excerpt, he does not treat this enumeration as a detailed economic judgment; rather, he places the verse within what he calls the “ambiguous Qur’an,” which requires interpretation. He defines interpretation here as bringing the verse into correspondence with reason and reality—that is, testing the truth and rationality of the statement. Thus, for him, the function of the verse is to open a space for a renewed understanding of human desires, rather than merely stopping at the items in the enumeration as closed meanings.
Shahrur uses Āl ʿImrān 14 to establish that the Qur’an identified the principal human desires, and that other desires branch out from them. He classifies the verse as part of the “ambiguous Qur’an” and holds that it requires interpretation, which he connects to bringing the verse into correspondence with reason and reality—that is, with the objective truth and rationality of the statement.
Excerpt and Location
The Book and the Qur’an — p. 498.
Limits of the Reading
- The excerpt does not detail how the elements of the verse are distributed among specific categories of desires, nor does it explain every item in the enumeration.
- The claim that Shahrur builds upon the verse an interpretation of the economic system or of the movement of production and consumption is not supported by this direct excerpt, and is therefore not attributed to him here.
- Describing the verse as ambiguous and setting out its method of interpretation express Shahrur’s interpretive framework; the excerpt alone is insufficient to establish all the implications of that framework.
Continue From Here
Brief Reading
Shahrur uses the verse to classify human desires and to show their presence in people’s behavior and in the economic system. He also returns to it to interpret some of its expressions in a way that links linguistic meaning with human activity in production and consumption, leaving the text open to more than one layer of understanding.
Axes
- Human and ethical
- Political and social
- Linguistic and semantic
Related Concepts
- Desires: 3
- Love of desires: 2
- Branded horses: 2
Its Place in the Conceptual Network
The verse belongs to a conceptual network that brings together desires, the love of desires, and branded horses. It is central because it places worldly enjoyment within an ethical and social context, and permits a reading of desire as an element of civilization rather than merely an isolated individual inclination.
The Verse’s Role in the Argument
- Foundational: 2
- Supporting: 1
- Distinguishing: 1
Summary of Its Presence in the Atlas
- A foundation for classifying human desires
- Connected to economics and human behavior
- Used to explain certain expressions in the verse
Instances of Use
- The State and Society, p. 179: He makes the verse the basis for classifying human desires and for showing that the economic system rests on these desires as the enjoyment of worldly life.
- Concept: Love of desires
- Function of the verse here: Foundational
- Textual excerpt: “He classified the love of development and renewal in things as the first and most deeply rooted of desires in the human being, and concerning it came the statement: {Made alluring to people is the love of desires …} (Āl ʿImrān 14).”
- The State and Society, p. 181: He uses it to interpret “branded horses” as trained/marked horses, then links them to the desire arising from industrial progress.
- Concept: Branded horses
- Function of the verse here: Supporting
- Textual excerpt: “As for branded horses62, they are trained, marked, and raised horses, as in His—Exalted be He—statement: {marked by your Lord} (Hūd 83).”
- The Book and the Qur’an, p. 498: He uses the verse to establish a division of human desires into six desires and links them to the concept of enjoyment in worldly life.
- Concept: Desires
- Function of the verse here: Foundational
- Textual excerpt: “The Qur’an has identified the principal human desires … in the following verse … (Āl ʿImrān 14).”
- The Book and the Qur’an, p. 505: He uses it to argue that “women” here means things that come later and that “children” means buildings, in a manner consistent with human consumer and productive behavior.
- Concept: Desires
- Function of the verse here: Distinguishing
- Textual excerpt: “For men here do not at all mean ‘males,’ and women do not at all mean ‘females’ … Human desires are movable and immovable things.”
- Corresponding traditional reading: Understanding women and children as women and male offspring
Related Books
This page is presented within the general atlas construction methodology.