What does the claim mean here?
The point is not to deny the rituals, but to relocate them within Shahrur’s classification: for him, they are signs of following the Prophet within faith, and he does not count them among the pillars of Islam in the broader sense that he extends to include anyone who believes in God and the Last Day in submission and performs righteous deeds, regardless of religious affiliation.
What is attributed to Shahrur
Shahrur says that the “entry ticket to Islam” is belief in God and the Last Day in submission, and that righteous action is the Muslim’s general conduct. He then describes the followers of Muhammad’s creed as “believers” because they follow the Prophet in the rituals, giving as examples the five daily prayers, fasting Ramadan, the zakat threshold, and the funeral prayer. At the end of the passage, he explicitly states that these rituals are “among the pillars of faith, not among the pillars of Islam.”
Atlas explanation
This atom records a distinction between Islam and Faith at this point in the book: Islam is a broader framework connected with belief in God and the Last Day and righteous action, whereas faith, for the followers of Muhammad’s creed, includes following the Prophet in the rituals. Here, Righteous action is associated with Islam, which the text calls “the Muslim’s general conduct.”
Synthetic conclusion
This arrangement implies that differences among religious creeds, in the formulation presented here by Shahrur, are connected to differences in rituals. He therefore makes the rituals specific to Muhammad’s creed a distinguishing feature within the sphere of faith, rather than a condition for defining Islam in its general sense.
Open question and limits of the evidence
The passage does not provide a complete list that it calls the “pillars of Islam”; it therefore does not establish a closed enumeration of these pillars or their correspondence to a list commonly circulated outside this text. This page also establishes Shahrur’s statement at this point, without detailing objections to it or comparing it with other Islamic definitions.