This entry belongs to the Shahrur lexicon. It is one of the keys to Shahrur’s method of reading: the terms of the Revelation are not to be gathered into a single meaning if their semantic fields can be distinguished.
Meaning in Shahrur
Synonymy, for Shahrur, is a methodological problem rather than merely a linguistic one. An intellect that levels all words erases the distinctions on which the text builds its concepts, and reproduces inherited meaning instead of producing new knowledge. For this reason, his rejection of synonymy is tied to recitation, the Arabic tongue, reading the Qur’an through the Qur’an, and the fixity of the text together with the movement of understanding.
Its function in reading
- It distinguishes between terms such as Islam and faith, prophet and messenger, tidings and report, and deed and act.
- It makes coordination between words a clue to difference or to a relationship of the specific to the general, not to verbal identity.
- It makes it possible to construct a precise Qur’anic term; if the words were synonymous, it would not be possible to distinguish the Book, the Qur’an, the Remembrance, and the Criterion.
- It prevents treating Qur’anic discourse as padding or poetic repetition.
- It turns language into an instrument of knowledge, not verbal ornamentation.
- It places the reader before the question of the specific meaning of each word within context.
What it adjoins and what it differs from
- It adjoins poetry, because the rejection of synonymy separates the Revelation from the logic of poetry and padding.
- It adjoins interpretation, because interpretation requires fixing the terms before matching report with reality and reason.
- It adjoins tidings and report as a direct example of the rejection of synonymy.
- It adjoins semantic distinctions as a practical index of the pairs that Shahrur refuses to level.
Foundational links
- Rejection of synonymy among the words of revelation
- Synonymy impedes the building of knowledge
- The Arab mind suffers from three ailments
- Language serves meaning
- Eloquence consists in conveying meaning with the fewest words
- The Remembrance is a modern Arabic form of the Book
- Reading is explanation, not recitation
- Tidings differ from report
- The general deed and the specific act
- The Wise Revelation was sent down in the tongue of Quraysh and unified meaning in a way that supports elevating Arabic to a language of science and the critique of synonymy
Limits of the reading
The rejection of synonymy does not mean isolating each word from its network. What is meant is that the semantic difference becomes part of the argument, and that the proximity between words does not permit the abolition of their specific functions.