This axis brings together 2 instances of Muhammad Shahrur’s use of this verse in his books, linking it to the concepts and arguments that emerge around it.
Verse text as cited
{O you who believe, when you go forth in the cause of God, make sure, and do not say to one who offers you peace, ‘You are not a believer’…}
Brief reading
The verse is understood as a call to verify and to respect the one who offers peace, while rejecting the making of unbelief into a reason for fighting.
Axes
- Faith-related
- Political and social
Related concepts
- Freedom of belief: 2
- Verification: 2
Its place in the network of concepts
It confronts readings that justify killing on the basis of assumptions about faith.
The role of the verse in the argument
- Foundation: 1
- Critique of heritage: 1
Instances of use
- Drying Up the Sources of Terrorism, pp. 110-111: He understands it as a prohibition on making unbelief a reason for fighting and as an obligation to verify and respect the one who offers peace.
- Concept: Freedom of belief
- Function of the verse here: Foundation
- Textual evidence: «God, the Exalted, says: {O you who believe, when you go forth in the cause of God, make sure…} (An-Nisa 94). This verse forbids those who believe from considering religious unbelief a reason for fighting»
- Drying Up the Sources of Terrorism, p. 190: He uses it to refute an argument that permits killing one who has shown Islam or one who offers peace, emphasizing that it forbids denying faith and arbitrary killing.
- Concept: Verification
- Function of the verse here: Critique of heritage
- Textual evidence: «{O you who believe, when you go forth in the cause of God, make sure, and do not say to one who offers you peace, ‘You are not a believer’…} (An-Nisa 94).»
- Countervailing traditional reading: Using it to assert the killing of one who appears to be Muslim and then is found to be otherwise
Related books
This page is presented within the general method of building the atlas.