Intended meaning
Shahrur understands the verse on retaliation in al-Baqarah as addressing cases of killing that occur in the context of clan, tribal, or collective fighting As for individual killing, the Qur’an has other rulings that take on its treatment
The atom’s structure in the atlas
- Type of argument: legislative
- Movement of the argument: it restricts retaliation to cases of mass killing associated with tribal fighting.
- Central terms: retaliation, killing, fighting, collective.
- Degree of centrality: central.
It assigns a Qur’anic ruling to a specific context and prevents its generalization to every form of killing. In this way, it works to delimit the scope of the ruling rather than apply it in a single uniform manner.
Links that help with reading
- Muhammad Shahrur the Book and the Qur’an
- Legislation, limits, and prohibition
- fighting
- Abrogation does not occur within the Muhammadan message but pertains to the earlier messages
Basis
- Supporting text: “The verse of retaliation in al-Baqarah concerns the circumstances of clan/tribal and collective fighting, not individual killing, which other verses address.”
Basis location in the book
- Book: the Book and the Qur’an.
- Location: in the middle section of the book, within the explanation of the verse of retaliation and its limits.
- Type of basis: close evidence.
- Marker that helps verification: retaliation in those killed
- Reading note: the text specifies the verse of al-Baqarah as concerning clan and tribal killing and excludes individual killing from it, which matches the atom.
Degree of documentation
- Level: directly documented
- Meaning of the level: the atom relies on an explicit witness close to the wording of the claim.
- Reading limits: the formulation above is an analytical summary and should not be treated as a verbatim quotation unless the witness is reproduced textually.
Its function in the book
Its function here is interpretive; it offers a reading of the meaning of the text or of its relation to other texts.
Related to
Editorial note
The atom is interpretive within the scope of the ruling, with a distinction made between kinds of killing.