What is meant
What is meant is that the right to declare prohibition and permission belongs neither to human beings nor to religious authority, but is God’s alone. Therefore, no one may impose anything on people as being lawful or unlawful on their own authority.
The atom’s structure in the atlas
- Type of argument: legislative
- Argument movement: the right to declare prohibition and permission belongs to God alone, not to human beings.
- Key terms: prohibition, permission, God, religious authority.
- Degree of centrality: original.
It establishes a legislative principle that confines the highest moral authority of obligation to the divine reference and prevents human ijtihad from becoming an independent source of prohibition or permissibility.
Links that help with reading
Grounding
- Supporting text: «“No one has the right to prohibit or permit… because God alone has the right to declare prohibition and permission.”».
Location of the grounding in the book
- Book: Islam and Man.
- Location: in the first section of the book, within the discussion of the limits of prohibition and permission and its relation to God’s sovereignty.
- Type of grounding: direct witness.
- Mark that helps verification: God alone has the right to declare prohibition and permission
- Reading note: This passage is suitable as evidence because it explicitly states that the only right to declare prohibition and permission belongs to God, and mentions this in the context of responding to those who attribute it to others.
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 formulation above is an analytical summary and should not be 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 on which Shahrur relies in building the idea.
Editorial note
The phrase is highly central in the legislative system and deserves cross-reference with the atoms of prohibition and permission.