What Is Attributed to Shahrur
“Shahrur distinguishes among multiple levels of belonging: the ummah, nationality, and the people, then relates them to different forms of loyalty without contradiction. He rejects transforming religious, sectarian, or class loyalty into exclusionary loyalty, considering it among the causes of despotism and violence. He maintains that what was termed in the tradition ‘apostasy’ involved a conflation of the religious and the political, and that at its core it was often a struggle over power and political secession, rather than merely a change of belief.”
Atlas Explanation
The governing constraint in this atom is the shift toward exclusion: the witness explicitly rejects transforming loyalty into exclusionary loyalty, and does not describe religious, sectarian, or class loyalty as objectionable in itself. It is therefore incorrect to reduce this passage to a rejection of every form of religious, sectarian, or class belonging.
This passage is connected to a reading of Loyalty, and to its broader context in Muhammad Shahrur Destroying the Sources of Terrorism. Its connection to the question of religion and authority can also be read through The Civil State, Religion, and Authority.
Synthetic Conclusion
The witness brings together multiple forms of belonging and a critique of exclusion. It does not describe religious, sectarian, or class loyalty as objectionable in itself; rather, it explicitly rejects transforming it into exclusionary loyalty, placing it within a context of multiple levels of belonging and different, non-conflicting forms of loyalty.
Open Question and Limits of Reading
The excerpt does not provide a detailed criterion by which all cases or groups can be classified as exclusionary. Its discussion of apostasy also establishes an intertwining of the religious and the political in the account it presents, but it does not equate every change in belief with every political conflict.