Meaning
What is meant is that the right to permit and prohibit belongs neither to human beings nor to religious authority; rather, it belongs to God alone. Therefore, no one may impose anything on people as lawful or forbidden on their own authority.
The Atom’s Structure in the Atlas
- Type of argument: legislative.
- Argument movement: permitting and prohibiting are God’s right alone, not the right of human beings.
- Central terms: prohibition, permission, God, religious authority.
- Degree of centrality: foundational.
It establishes a legislative principle that confines the highest right of moral obligation to divine authority and prevents human interpretation from being transformed into an independent source of prohibition or permission.
Links That Aid Reading
Supporting Evidence
- Supporting text: «“No one has the right to prohibit or permit … because God is the sole holder of the right to permit and prohibit.”».
Location of the Evidence in the Book
- Book: Islam and the Human Being.
- Location: in the first section of the book, within the discussion of the limits of permitting and prohibiting and their relation to God’s sovereignty.
- Type of evidence: direct citation.
- Verification marker: God is the sole holder of the right to permit and prohibit.
- Reading note: this passage serves as evidence because it states directly that the sole right to permit and prohibit belongs to God, and it does so in the context of responding to those who attribute this right to others.
Degree of Documentation
- Level: directly documented.
- Meaning of the level: the atom rests on an explicit citation closely corresponding to the wording of the claim.
- Limits of reading: the wording above is an analytical summary and should not be treated as a verbatim quotation unless the citation has been reproduced textually.
Its Function in the Book
Its function here is definitional: it establishes a meaning or conceptual distinction on which Shahrur relies in constructing the idea.
Note for the Reader
This statement is highly central to the legislative system and merits cross-reference with atoms concerning prohibition and permission.