What is meant
Disbelief here means covering up the truth or concealing it, while displaying hostility openly It is not merely a hidden stance, but a clear declaration of an antagonistic position
The atom’s structure in the atlas
- Type of argument: definitional
- Argument movement: It defines disbelief as covering up the truth while declaring hostility.
- Key terms: disbelief, covering up the truth, hostility, declaration.
- Degree of centrality: central.
It explains disbelief as an outward act rather than only an inward concealment, bringing together concealment and public confrontation in a single definition.
Links that help with reading
Grounding
- Supporting text: “Disbelief: covering/concealing/openly displaying hostility, and it is a declaration of an antagonistic position.”
Location of the grounding in the book
- Book: Islam and the Human.
- Location: in the middle section of the book, within the definition of disbelief and polytheism and the human position toward them.
- Type of grounding: close evidence.
- Marker that helps verification: public stance
- Reading note: This passage is suitable as support because it explains disbelief as a public, outward stance, which overlaps with the meaning required in the atom.
Degree of documentation
- Level: directly documented
- Meaning of the level: the atom rests on an explicit witness close to the formulation of the claim.
- Limits of reading: the formulation above is an analytical summary, and should not be treated as a verbatim quotation unless the witness is quoted textually.
Its function in the book
Its function here is definitional; it fixes a meaning or conceptual distinction that Shahrur relies on in building the idea.
Editorial note
The meaning here is both behavioral and positional.