The map opens the way to the conceptual atlas: how an idea moves between a book, a concept, a claim, and a point of reference anchored in a verse, and how partial readings gather into larger axes within Shahrur’s project.
The map is not a catalog of books. Its function is to present the course of Shahrur’s argument: linguistic distinction, a structure for Revelation, separation between registers and concepts, then results in religion, Sunna, legislation, and the state.
The central issue
Shahrur’s project revolves around the relationship between text and reality. It does not begin from inherited jurisprudence as a final criterion, but from the Wise Revelation and its text, open to contemporary reading. For that reason, certain keys recur in his work:
- The semantic distinction between Qur’anic terms.
- Reading the Qur’an by the Qur’an, not by inherited synonyms alone.
- Distinguishing between the Qur’an, the Book, and the Mother of the Book.
- Distinguishing between Islam and faith.
- Distinguishing between the register of the message and the register of prophethood.
- Restricting prohibition to God, and leaving civil legislation to society and the state.
- Understanding limits as a field of movement, not as rigid punishments.
- Linking freedom to volition, will, obligation, righteous action, and the rejection of coercion.
Movement within the atlas
The map presents the movement of the idea, not a list of links. The path begins with a question, then moves to a reading path, then to a major topic, then to a concept or term in the lexicon, then to a specific claim, then to a point of reference anchored in a verse, and then to the book in which the argument appeared. In this way, the idea appears within Shahrur’s project, not as an isolated link.
Cross-cutting axes
The atlas shows cross-cutting axes that are not confined to one book or one chapter. Their value becomes apparent when they are read through the concept, the book, and the verse-based point of reference:
- Freedom: read through volition, will, obligation, and the rejection of coercion.
- Human being: appears as an agent in knowledge, action, and history, not merely as a theoretical object.
- Citizenship: connected to the civil state, law, and equality among people in the public sphere.
- Critique of authoritarianism: connected to the critique of monopolizing prohibition, and to rejecting the conversion of jurisprudence or political power into a standard above text and society.
- History and development: connected to Qur’anic narrative, the Sunan, and human action in history.
Main entry points
- General interface
- Atlas entry points
- Graph representation
- Reading paths
- Shahrur’s major themes
- Shared concepts
- Shahrur’s lexicon
- Conceptual relations
- Verse-based points of reference
- Questions for examining Shahrur’s project
- Index of analyses
Layers of reading
- Books: 13 books representing different stages of his project.
- Major themes: cross-cutting axes across books that bring together the question, the concept, the verse-based point of reference, and the atom into a single entry.
- Concepts: terms that recur across the books and reveal the shared structure of the project.
- Book atoms: 775 small claims from the books, each with a basis and a documentation grade. To these are added 381 atoms from the episodes of the Great News as explanatory audiovisual material, not a book.
- Structure: major theses that organize the logic of each book.
- Clusters: families of claims revolving around one idea.
- Verse-based points of reference: 1258 verse pages tracking the presence of the Qur’anic text in the argument.
- Lexicon: 82 terms explaining how Shahrur shifts the meaning of a common word.
- Relations: 111 relations between concepts, such as distinction, grounding, tension, and expansion.
Reading paths
- General introduction to Shahrur’s project
- The method of contemporary reading
- The structure of Revelation: the Book, the Qur’an, and the Mother of the Book
- Islam and faith
- The messengerly and prophetic Sunna
- Legislation and limits
- Legal theory and the critique of inherited jurisprudence
- The state and religion
- Women, dress, and guardianship
- Jihad, fighting, and terrorism
- Qur’anic narrative and history
- Shahrur’s lexicon
Entry points for reading
- The general idea appears in Reading paths.
- Cross-book questions appear in Shahrur’s major themes.
- Concepts can be traced through Shared concepts or Shahrur’s lexicon.
- Documentation appears in the atoms linked to each structure.
- The Qur’anic argument appears in Verse-based points of reference.
- Reading by source begins from Sources or from Books, then expands through backlinks.
Documentation and method
- How was the atlas built?
- Copyright and usage
- Technical and visual credits
- Privacy and cookies policy
Atom pages display the basis and the documentation grade in a concise formulation: directly documented, compositionally documented, inferred from nearby context, or needing review. These formulations do not replace Shahrur’s original texts. They function as preliminary signals for tracing the idea within the atlas. As for the compositional statements in the map, they are not literal quotations except where the textual evidence is explicitly shown.