What is Meant
What is meant is that between the two limits in women’s clothing there is a wide space that is not determined by any detailed text, but is regulated by custom and the conditions of time and place. What is prohibited and what is prescribed each have their own limits, and what falls between them varies according to the environment and the era.
The Atom’s Structure in the Atlas
- Type of argument: Legislative
- Movement of the argument: Keeping clothing within a customary space between a lower limit and an upper limit.
- Key terms: clothing, the two limits, custom, time, place.
- Degree of centrality: Primary.
This shows that the regulation of clothing is not understood by him as a list of fixed details, but as an area governed by custom and circumstance, which opens the door to ijtihad and limits legislative rigidity.
Links That Help Reading
- Muhammad Shahrur: Toward New Foundations for Islamic Jurisprudence
- Women, Family, and Clothing
- The Light Verse sets a minimum limit for clothing and leaves the rest to custom
Basis
- Supporting text: “And between them lies a wide space governed by custom and the conditions of time and place.”
The Basis’s Location in the Book
- Book: Toward New Foundations for Islamic Jurisprudence.
- Location: In the middle section of the book, within the discussion of the limits of clothing and custom.
- Type of basis: Close evidence.
- Verification cue: he does not look at us through the family
- Reading note: This passage is suitable because it links rulings to justice and general application, and it is close to the idea that between the two limits there is a space regulated by custom and by time and place.
Degree of Documentation
- Level: Directly documented
- Meaning of the level: The atom relies on a direct 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.
Its Function in the Book
Its function here is definitional; it sets out a meaning or conceptual distinction on which Shahrur relies in building the idea.
Related to
Editorial Note
It should be linked directly to the atom of the minimum limit in the Light Verse so that the structure of the argument is completed.