This is a lexicographic entry that gathers the technical meaning of this term in Shahrur across his various books and connects its multiple uses.
This entry belongs to the Shahrur glossary. For reading by theme, you may refer to Shahrur’s major themes and shared concepts.
The meaning in Shahrur
Disbelief is the veiling of the truth together with overtly hostile attitudes toward it, so that it becomes an act of denial and open confrontation, not merely a difference in belief. In this usage, it is connected with severing the relation to values and truth, and with expressing rejection in an explicit manner.
Distinctions
- It is not the same as mere intellectual divergence or difference in affiliation, but is specifically the stance of denial or overt hostility
- It is not to be confused with associating others with God, which is based on fixing the mutable and associating others with it, nor with sin, bad deed, and transgression, which revolve around moral responsibility and its degrees.
Instances in his books
- Islam and the Human Being: disbelief is interpreted in this source as veiling or openly displaying hostility, not merely as a doctrinal difference. This meaning makes it an act of confrontation and overt enmity, tied to severance from values and truth
What is adjacent to it and differs from it
- Human Islam is re-founded Qur’anicly as a system of values, freedom, and citizenship that transcends closed identity
- The distinction between sin, bad deed, and transgression distributes responsibility between forgiveness, reform, and persistence
- Associating others with God is fixing the mutable
- Disbelief is an openly hostile declaration
- The Qur’anic method and the redefinition of concepts shift Islam from identity to values
- The concepts of allegiance, disbelief, and associating others with God are reread on a value basis rather than an identity basis