Shahrur sees that understanding society, religion, and history leads to a single conclusion: the civil state is based on freedom, pluralism, and organized citizenship and is not an extension of the village or of monistic authority. This judgment rests on the fact that history and society condemn monism to injustice and ruin and that human society develops historically toward more complex and organized forms until it reaches more civil and institutional configurations. The book also links this horizon to freedom and moral consciousness as explanations of human action and responsibility for injustice and the historical religious reading as an explanation of the emergence of society and its orientation toward rights, while identity and community are understood as historical and cultural constructions within society are placed within a pluralistic political unity that does not erase difference.