This is a lexicon entry that gathers the technical meaning of this term in Shahrur across his various books, and connects its multiple usages.
This entry belongs to Shahrur’s glossary. For reading by theme, one may refer to Shahrur’s major themes and shared concepts.
The meaning according to Shahrur
The witness is the one who performs testimony based on knowledge and inference, not on mere direct presence alone. In this way, proof and reason enter into the meaning of religious testimony, so that testimony becomes an epistemic stance through which truth is established and by which it is argued for.
Distinctions
- It differs from testimony as a general term; here, the witness is the one who carries out the testimonial act grounded in knowledge and inference
- It is not identical to the martyr; for the witness testifies through knowledge and proof, not in the sense of killing or combat.
- Here it is not understood as the counterpart of disbelief or polytheism in a combative dimension, but in an epistemic dimension.
- It is connected, in terms of meaning, to the concept of voluntary commitment in the covenant of Islam, but it is not the covenant itself.
Places in his books
- Islam and Faith: the witness is the one who provides an evidentiary, inferential testimony, not a direct testimonial presence. In this way, Shahrur makes rational knowledge and proof part of the concept of religious testimony
What is adjacent to it and differs from it
- testimony
- distinguishing the witness from the martyr
- distinguishing the martyr from the witness
- the concepts of disbelief, polytheism, and testimony in Shahrur are epistemic, not combative