This axis brings together 1 instance of the use of this verse in the books of Muhammad Shahrur, linking it to the concepts and arguments that appear around it.
Text of the Verse as Cited
Whoever submits his face to God while doing good has surely grasped the firmest handhold. And to God belongs the final outcome of all matters.
Reader’s Answer
Question
How does Muhammad Shahrur employ the Qur’anic statement, “Whoever submits his face to God while doing good has surely grasped the firmest handhold”?
Shahrur employs the verse as evidence that the “firmest handhold” is the “covenant,” and that this covenant, in his view, is Islam founded on belief in God, belief in the Last Day, and righteous action. He links submitting one’s face to God together with doing good to holding fast to this covenant, rather than to a mere religious designation or coercion.
Shahrur explicitly states that the occurrence of “the firmest handhold” in Luqman 22 clarifies the “features of the covenant.” He interprets the covenant as Islam with its three pillars: belief in God, belief in the Last Day, and righteous action. He thus makes holding fast to the firmest handhold connected to these pillars, alongside the verse’s description of its bearer as one who does good. Shahrur presents the covenant as a voluntary commitment and a relationship of trust between God and the human being, grounding this connection in his earlier discussion of al-Baqarah 256 and then Luqman 22.
Evidence and Location
Islam and Faith — p. 109.
Limits of the Reading
- This presents how Shahrur employs the verse in his book; it does not assert that this is the verse’s only or necessary interpretation.
- The evidence establishes Shahrur’s link between the verse, the covenant, and the three pillars of Islam, but the passage does not provide a detailed independent proof for every interpretive step.
- The association of “while doing good” in the verse should not be turned into a decisive technical equivalence between beneficence and righteous action without additional evidence from the book itself.
Continue From Here
Brief Reading
It presents it as evidence that holding fast to the firmest handhold means Islam with its pillars together with beneficence.
Axes
- Faith-related
- Methodological
Related Concepts
Its Place in the Conceptual Network
It connects doctrinal adherence with the methodological construction of Islam and beneficence.
The Verse’s Role in the Argument
- Support: 1
Instances of Use
- Islam and Faith, p. 109: It presents it as evidence that holding fast to the firmest handhold means Islam with its pillars together with beneficence.
- Concept: the firmest handhold
- Function of the verse here: Support
- Textual evidence: “The term (the firmest handhold) occurs in the Qur’anic statement: {Whoever submits his face to God while doing good has surely grasped the firmest handhold}”
Related Books
This page is presented within the general atlas construction methodology.