This is a glossary entry that gathers the technical meaning of this term in Shahrur’s work across his various books, and connects its multiple usages.
This entry belongs to Shahrur’s glossary. For reading by axis, one may refer to Shahrur’s major themes and shared concepts.
Meaning in Shahrur
A reading that makes the understanding of the Salaf the final standard for interpreting the text, and treats the past as an absolute reference to which meaning and judgment are referred. In Shahrur’s critique of it, it relies on transmitted reports to establish a single interpretation and exclude opposing readings, thereby allowing the historical reference to prevail over the text’s present meaning.
Distinctions
- It is not merely returning to the heritage or benefiting from it, but turning it into a final authority that prevents revision and critique
- It differs from the critical reading of the Wise Revelation, which approaches the stories as a domain for renewed understanding and coexistence, not for closing meaning off within a single understanding.
Passages from his books
- The Qur’anic Story, vol. 2: Shahrur attacks it because it fixes the understanding of the Salaf and makes the past an absolute reference, and uses transmitted reports to exclude the other and affirm superiority. For him, it is a historicist reading through which the texts are obscured, and it contradicts the critical reading that he calls for
What is adjacent to it and different from it
- The occasions of revelation and transmitted reports are not valid as an absolute basis for understanding
- The Wise Revelation reads the stories critically in order to ground coexistence and freedom
- The Salafi reading makes the past an absolute reference
- Critique of the Salafi reading of the stories