This is a lexicographic entry that brings together the technical meaning of this term in Shahrur’s writings across his different books, and connects its various usages.
This entry belongs to the Shahrur glossary. For reading by theme, one may refer to Shahrur’s major themes and shared concepts.
Meaning in Shahrur
National loyalty is belonging to the nation as a community of language, culture, and shared memory, from which the preservation of identity and the safeguarding of the mother tongue are derived. However, it is not made a bond superior to citizenship, nor a substitute for the legal and political contract that regulates the relationship with the civil state.
Distinctions
- It differs from citizenship because it is a cultural and identity-based belonging, whereas citizenship is a legal-political bond that determines rights and duties
- It differs from religious or faith-based loyalties, which are understood on a value-based basis, because here it rests on national belonging rather than on a criterion of belief.
Passages from his books
- Islam and the Human Being: national loyalty is presented as a belonging that preserves the mother tongue and cultural identity. But it remains lower than citizenship, and does not rise above the legal and political contract that binds the citizen to the civil state
What is adjacent to it and differs from it
- Citizenship
- The distinction between sin, bad deed, and offense distributes responsibility between forgiveness, reform, and insistence
- National loyalty preserves identity
- The concepts of loyalty, unbelief, and polytheism are reread on a value-based rather than identity-based foundation