Muhammad

Muhammad, in this book, is not merely the focus of sanctity; he is also part of a historical reading of legislation and the Qur’anic narratives. Shahrur presents him as the bearer of a mission that inaugurated the age of cities and the civil state, while his legislation remains a historical ijtihad directed to a specific community.

• Arab identity is cultural, not racial
• The civil state is founded on rights and freedoms
• Constitutional shura has multiple referents
• The family began as the first human cell
• Freedom and knowledge are twins
• Freedom is a fundamental social phenomenon
• Freedom is constrained by the constitution
• Human society develops historically
• Human values found the state and society
• Law regulates practice within the constitution
• Monolithic systems lead to ruin
• The moral referent is fixed and binding
• Muhammadan legislation is historically situated
• Nations are defined by conduct and language
• Patriarchy followed transformations in property
• Pluralism expresses divine oneness
• The prophet has no guardianship over people
• The Qur’anic narratives carry historical laws
• Shura means democratic freedom
• Shura is based on pluralism
• Society passes through family stages
• Adam and the villages explain the transition from humanity to social destiny
• Adam represents the first human transition
• Those in authority are obeyed in their legislation, not in their persons
• Abraham purified the House; he did not build it
• Imbalance in the relationship produces despotism
• Monism leads to despotism and ruin
• Monism leads to ruin
• Monism produces injustice, despotism, and ruin
• Monism produces the unjust village
• Monism is a divine, not a social, attribute
• Monism is a divine attribute, not a human model
• Monism and despotism lead to ruin
• Morality is not made by authority
• The nation and Arabness are a linguistic-cultural identity
• Modern monolithic systems are a continuation of the village
• Monolithic systems carry the seeds of their own demise
• The economy arises from the development of instincts
• The Muhammadan mission inaugurated the age of cities
• The Sacred House predates Abraham
• Social history moves from monism to pluralism
• History and society judge monism as injustice and ruin
• History moves toward pluralism
• Pluralism makes the civil state
• Pluralism is a condition of development and freedom
• Pluralism is the basis of the state and civil society
• Thamud were a union of multiple tribes
• Freedom regulates human action between will and volition
• Freedom is the الأصل that the constitution delimits and law regulates
• Freedom, shura, and democracy
• Freedom and moral awareness explain human action and responsibility for injustice
• Fear of God needs defined limits
• Imagination turns into reality
• The civil state presupposes pluralism and the separation of powers
• The civil state is based on pluralism
• The civil state is based on freedom, pluralism, and organized citizenship
• The civil state is based on obedience to the law
• The civil state and civil society are the horizon of history because pluralism and freedom defeat monism
• Democracy mediates between the individual and society
• The revelations regulate coexistence and rights
• The revelations and the Muhammadan mission found a society of rights and pluralism
• Slavery is a historical phenomenon that can be dismantled
• Slavery and possession of right hands are two historical phenomena that can be dismantled
• Falsehood and despotism corrupt morality, while morality remains fixed above politics
• Falsehood disables the mind and generates guilt
• Associating partners with God rests on illusory fixity
• The divine law and its general outlines
• The American people bring together multiple ethnicities and nations
• The French people cohere within one state
• The people and the state translate plurality within a political unity
• The people includes nationality and nationhood
• Desires are born from instincts through knowledge
• Shura is constitutional democracy based on pluralism and organized referents
• Tyranny is the hallmark of monolithic thought
• Injustice is a deliberate, conscious act
• Injustice is a conscious act that leads to ruin
• Injustice requires freedom
• Injustice means placing a thing where it does not belong
• Reason and knowledge turn speech into action
• Contracts are an alternative basis to slavery
• Violence is justified as a means of lifting oppression
• The Qur’an establishes pluralism and prevents monism
• The historical religious reading explains the emergence of society and directs it toward rights
• Monolithic villages are doomed to ruin
• The affluent drive village deviance
• The religious domain is individual
• Human society develops historically toward more complex and organized forms
• Civil society is based on pluralism
• Society develops historically through the family and property
• Society passes through three historical stages
• Will is not volition
• Ruin differs from death
• Identity and group are understood as historical and cultural constructions within society
• Changing the collective mind is one of the hardest tasks
• Multiplying prohibitions narrows religion
• The binary of monism and pluralism
• Freedom of opinion is part of the civil state
• The signification of the boy and the girl
• The citizen state is the state capable of continuity
• Rejecting the confinement of possession of right hands to slavery
• The story of Moses and the righteous servant symbolizes the struggle between knowledge and law
• Domains of possession of right hands
• The meaning of ‘abd in usage
• Mecca is not suitable as a civil capital
• Mecca and the Sacred House are understood as a ritual condition preceding political construction
• Possession of right hands as contractual relations
• Possession of right hands is a transitional stage toward freedom
• The ruin of villages is linked to collective injustice