What is meant
What is meant is that the authority to declare prohibition is not the right of a sheikh or an imam; rather, it is tied to a specific revelatory authority. But the modern state’s function is to regulate the permissible by prohibition or permission, without claiming religious prohibition.
The atom’s structure in the atlas
- Type of argument: political
- Argument movement: it makes the function of the modern state prohibition and permission, not prohibition.
- Central terms: the modern state, prohibition, permission, forbidding.
- Degree of centrality: pivotal.
It grants the state a regulatory role, not a religious one, thus separating civil legislation from religious ruling. This is consistent with a civil conception of public authority.
Reading aids
- Muhammad Shahrur, Towards New Foundations for Islamic Jurisprudence
- The Civil State, Religion, and Authority
- Prohibition
- The conflict after the Prophet’s death was political
Basis
- Supporting text: «It states that prohibition is not owned by a sheikh or imam, but is tied to a new revelatory authority; whereas the modern state permits or forbids and does not prohibit».
Place of the basis in the book
- Book: Towards New Foundations for Islamic Jurisprudence.
- Location: at the beginning of the book, within the treatment of the difference between old and modern legislation
- Type of basis: close evidence.
- Marker that helps verification: it allowed us to see what those before us were unable to see
- Reading note: the passage moves toward the idea that changing human texts are not equivalent to the status of divine prohibition, and it is close to distinguishing between prohibition and forbidding in the modern state.
Degree of documentation
- Level: directly documented
- Meaning of the level: the atom rests on an explicit witness close to the wording of the claim.
- Limits of the reading: the formulation above is an analytical summary, and is not treated as a verbatim quotation unless the witness is reproduced verbatim.
Its function in the book
Its function here is argumentative; it supports a larger conclusion in the chapter or prepares for it.
Related to
Editorial note
The atom addresses the limits of the state in the legal sphere.