Al-Waqiʿah 60

3 min read

This axis brings together 1 instance of the use of this verse in Muhammad Shahrur’s books, linking it to the concepts and arguments that appear around it.

Text of the verse as cited

We have decreed death among you, and We are not to be outstripped.

Reader’s answer

Question

How does Muhammad Shahrur employ God’s saying, “We have decreed death among you, and We are not to be outstripped,” to distinguish between qadar and qadaʾ?

Shahrur employs the verse to regard death as a “qadar” that God has made a general reality for people. He then distinguishes this qadar from “qadaʾ,” understood as the occurrence of an act or practice within the possibility made available by qadar. In his view, killing is qadaʾ, because it can be conceived only after the prior existence of death as qadar.

Shahrur explicitly states that death is a qadar decreed by God for people, relying on al-Waqiʿah 60. On this basis, he constructs a terminological distinction between qadar and qadaʾ: killing is qadaʾ for him, because the existence of death precedes it and is a condition for its possibility.

Citation and location

The State and Society — p. 25.

Limits of the reading

  • This explains Shahrur’s way of employing the verse; it does not assert that the verse alone imposes this terminology for qadar and qadaʾ.
  • The citation establishes the example of death and killing, and analogy with other examples, but the excerpt does not provide an independent, detailed definition of qadar as “objective laws.”
  • The citation does not establish a general ruling for every occurrence of the terms qadar and qadaʾ in the Qur’an; rather, it establishes this usage within his argument concerning the verse.

Continue from here

Brief reading

Through this verse, Shahrur establishes a definition of qadar as objective existence and laws, distinguishing it from qadaʾ as practices within this framework.

Axes

  • Methodological
  • Faith-based
  • Qadar: 2
  • Qadaʾ: 1
  • Laws: 1
  • Objective existence: 1

Its place in the network of concepts

It contributes to defining the two concepts and distinguishing their respective domains.

The verse’s role in the argument

  • Foundational: 1

Instances of use

  • The State and Society, p. 25: He makes it the basis for defining qadar as objective existence and laws, contrasting it with qadaʾ as practices within this framework.
    • Concept: Qadar
    • Function of the verse here: Foundational
    • Textual citation: “{We have decreed death among you, and We are not to be outstripped} (al-Waqiʿah 60).”
    • Corresponding traditional reading: The traditional concept of qadar as the efficacy of God’s eternal knowledge

This page is presented within the general atlas-building methodology.

Graph View

Muhammad Shahrur Atlas