Location of the citation: «القران في الفكر المعاصر», p. 26.
What Is Attributed to Shahrur
In his presentation of punishments, Shahrur says that “punishments fluctuate between lower and upper limits, leaving the task of ijtihad concerning them to human beings through legislative parliaments.” He links this to rejecting the confinement of the message to “the reading of the first three Hijri centuries” and to calling for ijtihad in order to understand its characteristics.
Atlas Explanation
This atom reads the statement in its immediate context: in the example of punishments, limits do not eliminate ijtihad; rather, they define the field within which it operates. The ijtihad intended in the text is not merely an abstract individual effort, since the citation explicitly mentions legislative parliaments.
Synthetic Conclusion
The formulation combines the existence of legislative limits with the possibility of legislative choice within them. Thus, this example may properly be described as linking human implementation to a defined framework, without the citation alone indicating the details of the mechanisms of choice or the applicability of the model to every area of Sharia.
Open Question and Limit of the Reading
What criteria govern the choice between the lower and upper limits? And how extensive is the authority of legislative parliaments in this ijtihad? The available citation does not answer these questions. Moreover, the atom’s original title is broader than the direct evidence; it is more precise to keep the judgment confined to the domain of punishments until further citations become available.
For the broader context: Muhammad Shahrur, The Qur’an in Contemporary Thought, and Legislation, Limits, and Prohibition.