The Intended Meaning
The passage asserts that prohibition is the right of God alone, and that neither the human being nor the religious institution possesses it. Yet society or authority may prevent or regulate certain acts, without adding new prohibitions outside the text.
The Atom’s Structure in the Atlas
- Type of argument: Legislative
- Movement of the argument: Attributes prohibition to God alone and denies it to human beings.
- Key terms: prohibition, God alone, human being, religious institution, prevention and regulation.
- Degree of centrality: Original.
This atom makes prohibition a purely divine matter and grants human beings a regulatory role, not a foundational role, in prohibition. It establishes the boundary between administrative prevention and the creation of prohibitions.
Links That Help Reading
- Muhammad Shahrur: Draining the Sources of Terrorism
- Legislation, Limits, and Prohibition
- prohibition
- human being
Basis
- Supporting text: “It offers a ḥanīf legislative reading that makes permissibility the default, restricts prohibition to God alone, and grants the human being/society the authority to prevent and regulate, not to prohibit. It redefines religious and moral concepts such as faith, Islam, servitude, polytheism, unbelief, sin, injustice, indecencies, and wine in service of its interpretive system.”
The Basis in the Book
- Book: Draining the Sources of Terrorism.
- Location: in the final section of the book
- Type of basis: near witness.
- Verification marker: separate obedience
- Reading note: This location works as support because it distinguishes between legislative obedience and obedience to the leader in a specific context, and it serves the idea of narrowing prohibition.
Degree of Documentation
- Level: structurally documented
- Meaning of the level: the atom rests on more than one witness or on a clear composition of closely related expressions.
- Reason for classification: the witnesses state clearly that prohibition is the right of God alone.
- Limits of reading: the wording above is an analytical summary, and should not be treated as a verbatim quotation unless the witness is quoted textually.
Editorial Note
Prevention is one thing, and prohibition is another in this structure.