The Intended Meaning
This thesis draws a decisive distinction between bequest and inheritance; bequest belongs to the private sphere and achieves private justice. Inheritance, by contrast, belongs to the public sphere, and it is an instrument for achieving public justice among groups.
The Atom’s Structure in the Atlas
- Type of argument: Value-based
- Argument movement: links inheritance to public justice, not individual justice.
- Key terms: inheritance, public justice, bequest.
- Degree of centrality: Primary.
It turns inheritance into an instrument of social balance, and makes bequest a field of private justice within the limited family sphere.
Reading Aids
- Muhammad Shahrur Toward New Foundations for Islamic Jurisprudence
- the Book, the Qur’an, and the Mother of the Book
Support
- Supporting text: “It distinguishes between bequest and inheritance decisively: bequest belongs to the private sphere and private justice, while inheritance belongs to the public sphere and public justice.”
Location of the Support in the Book
- Book: Toward New Foundations for Islamic Jurisprudence.
- Location: within the discussion of the difference between bequest and inheritance in the middle section of the book
- Type of support: Close evidence.
- Verification marker: Inheritance achieves public justice
- Reading note: This passage is suitable as support because it states that inheritance achieves public justice in contrast to bequest, which achieves private justice.
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 wording above is an analytical summary, and is not treated as a verbatim quotation unless the witness is quoted textually.
Its Function in the Book
Its function here is definitional; it fixes a meaning or conceptual distinction that Shahrur relies on in constructing the idea.
Editorial Note
The atom distinguishes between the justice of the community and the justice of the individual.