Intended Meaning
Muhammad Shahrur holds that the Abbasids relied, in consolidating their legitimacy, on their kinship to the Prophet, and on the verses on inheritance and bequest. He considers this an example of turning a political dispute over rule into a religious cover.
The Atom’s Structure in the Atlas
- Type of argument: Historical
- Argument movement: It reads Abbasid legitimacy as the instrumentalization of religion in a dispute over rule
- Key terms: the Abbasids, kinship, inheritance, bequest, rule.
- Centrality degree: Secondary.
This atom presents a historical example of turning political conflict into a religious cover. Its location within the atlas clarifies how the text is used in the struggle over power, not only in stating the ruling itself.
Links that help with reading
- Muhammad Shahrur Toward New Foundations for Islamic Jurisprudence
- The Civil State, Religion, and Power
- The conflict after the Prophet’s death was political
Basis
- Supporting text: “The problem after the Prophet’s death was not in prophethood or messengership, but in rule and the inheritance of the state. Then this political conflict was clothed in religious garb through the verses of messengership and prophethood. The Umayyad and Abbasid rulers used different ideological covers: the Umayyads through obedience to those in authority and predestination, and the Abbasids through kinship to the Prophet and the verses of inheritance and bequest. Reading the Qur’anic text outside its context, especially in the verses of fighting, tribulation, and inheritance, is, for Shahrur, more dangerous than fabricating the hadith itself”.
Place of the Basis in the Book
- Book: Toward New Foundations for Islamic Jurisprudence.
- Location: At the beginning of the book, in the discussion of the political problem after the Prophet’s death.
- Type of basis: Close witness.
- Marker that helps verification: rule and the inheritance of the state
- Reading note: This passage is suitable as evidence because it explains how the concepts of messengership and prophethood became mixed with rule and the inheritance of the 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 reading: The wording above is an analytical summary, and should not be treated as a verbatim quotation unless the witness is transmitted word for word.
Function in the Book
Its function here is declarative; it establishes a result on which what follows in the argument depends.
Related to
Editorial note
It is evidence of the use of text in political history.