What is meant
The passage presents the Qur’an as a text that is reordered structurally into binaries such as the decisive and the ambiguous, and into the divisions of the Book, the messengerhood, and prophethood. It makes this classification the basis for understanding the place of legislation and its relationship to the civil state.
The atom’s structure in the atlas
- Type of argument: methodological
- Argument movement: it reorders the Qur’an according to specific binaries and interpretive structures
- Central terms: the Qur’an, the decisive, the ambiguous, the Book, the messengerhood.
- Degree of centrality: pivotal.
This atom performs the function of rebuilding the map of the text; it does not suffice with partial meaning, but proposes a way to organize it. In this way, it enters the core of the contemporary reading project as a project of classification rather than mere explanation.
Links that help with reading
- Muhammad Shahrur, The Mother of the Book and Its Elaboration
- the contemporary reading method
- the Qur’an
- the decisive
- the ambiguous
Basis
- Supporting text: “The passage presents a broad reclassification of the Qur’anic text: decisive/ambiguous, Book/messengerhood/prophethood, then links this to the structure of legislation and the civil state.”
Basis in the book
- Book: The Mother of the Book and Its Elaboration.
- Location: in the first section of the book, where he explains the divisions of the Qur’an and the internal structure of the suras.
- Type of basis: a close witness.
- Marker that helps verification: Qur’an only, and Qur’an and Mother of the Book
- Reading note: this location is suitable as evidence because it clearly presents the project of internal reclassification of the Qur’anic text.
Degree of documentation
- Level: directly documented
- Meaning of the level: the atom relies 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 definitional; it sets out a meaning or conceptual distinction that Shahrur relies on in building the idea.
Related to
Editorial note
This atom organizes the view of the text before any derivation of rulings.