What is Meant
Shahrur argues that understanding the Qur’an in the modern era cannot be achieved by traditional tools alone, but requires modern cognitive tools grounded in the development of the sciences and human knowledge Therefore, reading the Qur’an today should begin from the modern sciences and from epistemology
The Atom’s Structure in the Atlas
- Type of argument: methodological
- Argument movement: it requires modern cognitive tools to understand the contemporary Qur’an.
- Key terms: contemporary reading, modern sciences, epistemology, cognitive tools.
- Degree of centrality: central.
It replaces exclusive reliance on traditional tools with recourse to the modern sciences and epistemology. This gives contemporary reading an epistemic foundation suited to the development of human understanding.
Links That Help with Reading
- Muhammad Shahrur the Qur’an in Contemporary Thought
- The Method of Contemporary Reading
- Contemporary reading of the Qur’an breaks its tie to inherited tradition and rests on a scientific method
Grounding
- Supporting text: «It moves to “epistemology” to say that understanding the contemporary Qur’an requires modern cognitive tools, and that human knowledge develops just as human reading of existence develops».
Place of Grounding in the Book
- Book: The Qur’an in Contemporary Thought.
- Location: in the first section of the book, in his discussion of the tools for understanding existence.
- Type of grounding: close evidence.
- Verification marker: its study requires cognitive tools
- Reading note: this passage is suitable as evidence because it explicitly states the need for cognitive tools, knowledge, and proof to understand existing things.
Degree of Documentation
- Level: structurally documented
- Meaning of the level: the atom relies on more than one witness, or on a clear composition of closely related phrases.
- Reason for classification: the idea is repeated in three witnesses with very similar formulations.
- Limits of reading: the formulation above is an analytical summary, and should not be treated as a verbatim quotation unless the witness is quoted verbatim.
Its Function in the Book
Its function here is methodological; it regulates the way of reading or inferring that the book follows.
Related to
Editorial Note
The grounding points to updating the tools of understanding, not to the abolition of the text.