The Unifying Thesis
Muhammad Shahrur’s project, through these books, is based on reconstructing Islamic understanding starting from the Qur’an alone as the fixed foundational text, while treating the juristic, hadith, and exegetical heritage as a historical human understanding that is not binding. This project combines four intertwined movements: dismantling Qur’anic terminology by rejecting synonymy and maintaining a strict distinction between words; separating messengerhood from prophethood, and religion from power, and divine prohibition from human regulation; establishing a flexible legal theory based on limits and ijtihad within the fixed, not on doctrinal rigidity; and linking Islam to universal values such as freedom, dignity, plurality, citizenship, and justice, so that Islam becomes, for him, a broad human framework wider than narrow ritual identity.
Major Axes
- Redefining the relationship with the Qur’anic text: Qur’an / Book / Reminder / Criterion / Mother of the Book / detailed exposition, while making the text fixed and understanding dynamic.
- Distinguishing between messengerhood and prophethood, and the implications of that for separating the sphere of legislation from the sphere of stories, reports, and knowledge.
- Differentiating between Islam and faith, making Islam the religion of innate disposition and general values, and faith linked to the Muhammadan message and its rituals.
- Establishing a linguistic-philological method based on rejecting synonymy, gathering verses thematically, and interpreting the Qur’an through the Qur’an.
- Building a legal theory based on the decisive and the ambiguous, the limits, and ijtihad, while restricting abrogation to what lies between revelations.
- Limiting prohibition to what God has prohibited, and distinguishing between the divine forbidden and what is banned, proscribed, or legally regulated.
- Critiquing inherited hadith and Sunna by distinguishing between the fixed messengerly Sunna and the situational historical prophetic Sunna.
- Dismantling the political use of religion, critiquing ideological sovereignty, and calling for the civil state, citizenship, and separation of powers.
- Reinterpreting jihad, fighting, martyrdom, loyalty and disavowal, and apostasy within a framework of freedom and defense of the human being rather than coercion.
- Reading Qur’anic narratives as a philosophy of history, moral lesson, and laws of history, not as a direct source of rulings.
- Revisiting family, women, inheritance, bequest, marriage, adoption, what the right hands possess, and dress within a contemporary horizon.
- Linking interpretation to modern science, objective reality, anthropology, and history, rather than merely relying on inherited tradition.
Central Constants
- The Qur’an is the only supreme reference, and everything else from heritage, hadith, or jurisprudence is historical material open to criticism.
- There is no synonymy in the Wise Revelation; every term has a specific signification and an independent conceptual function.
- The divine text is fixed, but human understanding is historical and renewed with the renewal of knowledge and reality.
- Distinguishing between the divine fixed and the human variable is a methodological principle present in most of the books.
- Messengerhood is not prophethood: messengerhood is for legislation and values, and prophethood is for reports, knowledge, and historical management.
- Islam is broader than faith, and righteous action is an essential part of religiosity.
- Freedom is a condition of obligation and worship, and coercion is the opposite of religion.
- Prohibition is God’s alone; humans’ domain is legislation, regulation, and legal restriction.
- Rituals are an individual optional sphere, and the state should not turn them into a tool of coercion.
- Plurality is a religious, social, and political value, and monism is the root of despotism and ruin.
- The civil state is the preferred political form within the project, based on citizenship, law, and separation of powers.
- The traditional juristic heritage is accused of replacing the text with historical accumulations, and of confusing religion and authority.
- Jihad and fighting are originally defensive/liberatory concepts, not a means of imposing belief.
- Qur’anic narratives are for moral lesson and understanding history, not for extracting direct legislation.
- Ijtihad is a continuing necessity, and the final message opened the field for human legislation within the limits.
Major Developments or Shifts Across the Books
For reading them as functional stages within the project, also see Stages of Muhammad Shahrur’s Thought.
- In The Book and the Qur’an, Mother of the Book and Its Detailed Exposition, and A Guide to the Contemporary Reading of the Wise Revelation, the foundational focus is clearer: building the general conceptual and methodological apparatus of the text, and distinguishing between the major semantic fields.
- In Islam and Faith and Islam and the Human Being, the project moves toward clarifying the value-laden and anthropological content: innate disposition, righteous action, freedom, sin and evil deed, polytheism and disbelief, and citizenship.
- In The Messengerly Sunna and the Prophetic Sunna, the project moves from critiquing jurisprudence to critiquing the hadith source itself, narrowing the scope of binding authority outside the Qur’an and intensifying the separation between messengerhood and prophethood.
- In Religion and Power, The State and Society, and The Qur’an in Contemporary Thought, the political and social face of the project becomes more explicit: critiquing monism, establishing the civil state, dismantling sovereignty, and linking monotheism to plurality.
- In the two parts of Qur’anic Narratives, the project expands from legislation and terminology to a philosophy of history, humanization, process, and the development of human consciousness, with clearer use of science, archaeology, and comparative history.
- In Drying Up the Sources of Terrorism, the project’s polemical-political application appears: using the same methodological tools to dismantle the logic of violence, apostasy, loyalty and disavowal, and combat jihad.
- In Towards New Foundations for Islamic Jurisprudence, the project appears in a relatively late stage of comprehensive fundamental rearticulation: critiquing the old and proposing an alternative to the principles of jurisprudence based on being, process, and becoming, and on redistributing the sphere of legislation between the divine and the human.
Foundational Terms
- the Book / the Qur’an / the Reminder / the Criterion / the Mother of the Book / the detailing of the Book
- messengerhood / prophethood
- the decisive / the ambiguous / detailed exposition
- interpretation / ijtihad / recitation in measured tones
- text fixity / content dynamism
- Islam / faith
- innate disposition / Hanifism / covenant / righteous action
- the lawful / the forbidden / prohibitions / proscribed matters / the prohibited
- the limits
- worship / rituals
- the messengerly Sunna / the prophetic Sunna
- connected obedience / disconnected obedience
- polytheism / disbelief / sin / evil deed / transgression / error
- testimony / martyr / witness
- jihad / fighting
- religion / authority
- divine sovereignty / human sovereignty
- monism / plurality
- village / city
- the civil state / citizenship / consultation / constitution / law
- human beings / the human being / spirit / self / intellect / heart
- Qur’anic narrative / moral lesson / report / news
- heritage / historical jurisprudence / contemporary reading
Key Books Within the Project
- The Book and the Qur’an: It appears to be the broadest foundational text of the project; in it the major conceptual structure is defined: the Book / the Qur’an, messengerhood / prophethood, text fixity / understanding dynamism, and the theory of limits.
- Mother of the Book and Its Detailed Exposition: Focuses on the legislative and methodological structure, and clarifies the role of the decisive and the ambiguous, detailed exposition, ijtihad, and the restriction of prohibitions.
- Islam and Faith: A pivotal book in redefining the identity of religion itself, by separating general Islam from specific faith, and linking religiosity to innate disposition and righteous action.
- The Messengerly Sunna and the Prophetic Sunna: Pivotal in reorganizing the sources of religious knowledge, and in undermining the centrality of hadith as a second revelation.
- Religion and Power: Politically pivotal; here the project moves into dismantling sovereignty and the conflation of religion and state in an explicit way.
- The State and Society: Socially and politically pivotal in linking monotheism to plurality, and in turning concepts such as village, city, and consultation into tools of civilizational analysis.
- Qur’anic Narratives, vols. 1 and 2: Pivotal in expanding the project from legislation and jurisprudence to a philosophy of history, humanization, and the development of consciousness.
- Towards New Foundations for Islamic Jurisprudence: Represents a relatively late formulation of the project’s overall aim: establishing a comprehensive fundamental alternative to inherited jurisprudence.
- Drying Up the Sources of Terrorism: An important applied book in which Shahrur tests his project in the arena of contemporary struggle over violence and religion.
Map of Relationships Between the Books
- The Book and the Qur’an establishes the first theoretical apparatus from which later books such as Mother of the Book and Its Detailed Exposition and A Guide to the Contemporary Reading of the Wise Revelation branch out.
- Mother of the Book and Its Detailed Exposition and A Guide to the Contemporary Reading of the Wise Revelation explain and regulate the reading method: the decisive and the ambiguous, measured recitation, linguistics, ijtihad, and the limits of legislation.
- Islam and Faith and Islam and the Human Being apply this method to the basic doctrinal, ethical, and human concepts, and form the heart of the project’s value system.
- The Messengerly Sunna and the Prophetic Sunna completes this path by settling the position of hadith and Sunna after reordering the relationship between messengerhood and prophethood.
- The Qur’an in Contemporary Thought serves as a bridge between theoretical foundation and civilizational critique, as it summarizes many of the earlier tools and connects them to the question of the Arab mind, historical jurisprudence, and the civil state.
- The State and Society and Religion and Power represent the direct political and social extension of the earlier methodological premises, translating them into a theory of state, citizenship, and legitimacy.
- The two parts of Qur’anic Narratives reemploy the messengerhood / prophethood distinction and text fixity / historical relativity of understanding in the field of history, creation, and humanization, thereby expanding the project beyond narrow legislation.
- Drying Up the Sources of Terrorism intersects with Religion and Power, The Messengerly Sunna and the Prophetic Sunna, and Islam and the Human Being in critiquing the violent use of religion, but presents it in the form of a practical confrontation with terrorist discourse.
- Towards New Foundations for Islamic Jurisprudence can be read as a synthetic outcome of a large number of earlier threads: critique of heritage, the authority of the text, restriction of prohibition, the civil state, and questions of women, family, and jurisprudence.