Intended Meaning
Shahrur understands alcohol as everything that brings about a state of drunkenness and confusion of consciousness, not as alcoholic drink alone. For this reason, drugs can enter into its meaning, and the point of abstention becomes the effect of intoxication and practical filth, not an absolute prohibition of the substance itself.
The Atom’s Structure in the Atlas
- Type of argument: legislative.
- Argument movement: it expands the signification from the name of the drink to the state of intoxication, then links the ruling to abstention rather than absolute prohibition.
- Central terms: alcohol, drugs, drunkenness, filth, abstention.
- Degree of centrality: pivotal.
This atom supports Shahrur’s distinction between prohibition, negation, and abstention, and makes him read alcohol and gambling within the field of regulation and ijtihad, not within an expansion of the circle of forbidden things.
Links to Aid Reading
- Islam and Human Beings
- Alcohol and Gambling Are Forbidden, Not Prohibited
- Alcohol and Gambling: Negation, Not Prohibition
- Abstention Does Not Equal Prohibition
- Prohibition
Close Qur’anic Verses
Basis
- Supporting text: in Islam and Human Beings, the point of alcohol is linked to the state of drunkenness and confusion of thought, and the verses of al-Ma’idah and an-Nisa’ are used to distinguish filth and intoxication from an absolute prohibition of the substance.
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.
Its Function in the Book
Its function here is to regulate a practical example in the chapter on prohibition and negation: how a sensitive substance such as alcohol and drugs is read within the distinction between intoxication, abstention, and prohibition.