Place of citation: “Drying Up the Springs of Terrorism,” p. 158.
Intended Meaning
The intended meaning here is that, in this aspect of Shahrur’s reading, faith cannot rest on coercion: it is valid only when it arises from choice and conviction. On this basis, he objects to turning the enjoining of what is right and the forbidding of what is wrong into a coercive practice.
What Is Attributed to Shahrur
Shahrur says that faith in God, His angels, His books, and His messengers is invalid unless it arises from “voluntary conviction and consent,” then asks: “How can enjoining what is right with a stick and forbidding what is wrong with a whip be valid?”
The argument presented thus goes beyond rejecting coercion in faith, connecting this rejection to a critique of coercive means in enjoining and forbidding.
Atlas Explanation
The atom brings together two related issues in the argument: the voluntary nature of faith and the critique of coercion in missionary and moral practice. This does not mean that the terms faith, preaching, enjoining what is right, and forbidding what is wrong are merged into a single meaning; the page is limited to explaining the connection that the text establishes among them.
For reading in the context of the book: Muhammad Shahrur, Drying Up the Springs of Terrorism. For the broader thematic context: Freedom, the Human Being, and Responsibility.
Specific Inference
This passage can be understood as establishing a practical criterion: if the validity of faith is conditional on consent, then the use of coercive instruments in guiding people religiously or morally is incompatible with it. This is an inference from the structure of the argumentative question in the text, not an independent definition of other terms.
Open Question and Documentation Limit
The original atom includes a statement linking the “Word of God” to freedom of choice, but the witness specifically assigned to it in the available content is incomplete, and the rest cannot be transmitted as a quotation. This page therefore does not establish that definition until a complete documented text is available. See also: Al-Baqara 256.