This axis brings together 1 occurrence of the use of this verse in the books of Muhammad Shahrur, linking it to the concepts and arguments that appear around it.
Text of the Verse as Cited
Then, when Our command came, We turned it upside down and rained upon it stones of layered baked clay.
Reader’s Answer
Question
How does Muhammad Shahrur employ Hud 82 in his interpretation of the meaning of the divine “command”?
Shahrur employs the verse within a group of verses in Surat Hud to distinguish the “decisive divine command” from the command connected to human conduct. He presents what occurred in it—turning the people’s upper side into their lower side and raining upon them stones of sijjil—as an event connected to existential phenomena governed by the laws of existence, rather than as an exhortation or a legislative injunction.
Shahrur cites Hud 82 in the context of repeated verses containing the phrase “when Our command came,” including the salvation of the believers in the stories of Hud, Salih, and Shuʿayb, and what befell their peoples. Shahrur links the “command” in this context to inevitable and decisive cosmic or existential phenomena, citing stones among his examples. He distinguishes this decisive command from the command concerning human conduct, which he describes as taking the form of an exhortation or injunction and being coupled with prohibition.
Evidence and Location
The State and Society — p. 24.
Limits of the Reading
- The evidence establishes Shahrur’s inclusion of the verse in his argument for the “decisive divine command,” but it does not provide an independent, detailed interpretation of the meaning of “sijjil” or of the historical or scientific manner of the event.
- The phrase “spatial inversion” summarizes the act of “We turned its upper side into its lower side,” but it is not an explicit term in the cited passage.
- No detailed causal theory regarding the nature of the stones or the mechanism of the event should be inferred; the evidence establishes the general framework: existential phenomena subject to the laws of existence.
Continue from Here
Brief Reading
It is used to explain that the decisive divine command may manifest itself in cosmic phenomena such as stones and spatial inversion.
Axes
- Methodological
- Political and Social
Related Concepts
- Divine command: 2
- Cosmic phenomena: 1
- Spatial inversion: 1
Its Place in the Network of Concepts
It affirms the presence of the divine command in tangible cosmic events.
The Verse’s Role in the Argument
- Example: 1
Instances of Use
- The State and Society, p. 24: It is used to explain that the decisive divine command may manifest itself in cosmic phenomena such as stones and spatial inversion.
- Concept: Divine command
- Function of the verse here: Example
- Textual evidence: “{Then, when Our command came, We turned it upside down…} (Hud 82),”
Related Books
This page is presented within the general methodology for building the atlas.