Intended meaning
Shahrur sees the science of abrogating and abrogated texts, as it settled in the tradition, not as a sound science, but as a delusion that led to the displacement of rulings from their proper places Thus he criticizes reliance on it in understanding the text and applying rulings
The atom’s structure in the atlas
- Type of argument: Critical
- Argument movement: Rejecting the science of abrogating and abrogated texts as a traditional delusion.
- Key terms: abrogating and abrogated texts, tradition, delusion, displacement of rulings.
- Degree of centrality: Original.
It withdraws legitimacy from a traditional interpretive tool that the author sees as having led understanding into error, and thereby reorders the relationship between the text and its rulings.
Links that help with reading
- Muhammad Shahrur: The Book and the Qur’an
- Critique of tradition, jurisprudence, and exegesis
- Abrogating and abrogated texts
Basis
- Supporting text: «The science of abrogating and abrogated texts, as it settled in the tradition, is a delusion that led people to displace rulings from their proper places».
Place of support in the book
- Book: The Book and the Qur’an.
- Location: among the early sections of the book, in the presentation of the author’s methodological additions
- Type of support: Close witness.
- Marker that helps verification: the concept of abrogating and abrogated texts
- Reading note: This passage is suitable as evidence because it mentions the introduction of the concept of abrogating and abrogated texts in a critical and methodological context.
Degree of documentation
- Level: Directly documented
- Meaning of the level: The atom rests on an explicit witness close to the wording 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 transmitted word for word.
Its function in the book
Its function here is oppositional; it responds to a common understanding or overturns an inherited reading in this passage.
Links
- The science of abrogating and abrogated texts is a delusion
Editorial note
The atom enters directly into a critique of inherited jurisprudential tools.