What is meant
Shahrur sees prohibition as a right belonging to God alone; human beings do not have the authority to invent new prohibitions on their own. Rather, the role of human beings is to regulate what is permitted and to restrict it according to need and public interest, not to legislate through prohibition.
The atom’s structure in the atlas
- Type of argument: legislative
- Argument movement: it affirms that prohibition is not within human authority
- Key terms: prohibition, divine right, permitted things, social regulation.
- Degree of centrality: primary.
This atom establishes that, for Shahrur, prohibition is an original divine principle, while human reasoning remains confined to regulation and restriction. It thus prevents human beings from moving from administering what is permissible to manufacturing what is forbidden.
Links that help with reading
- Muhammad Shahrur, Religion and Authority
- Legislation, Limits, and Prohibition
- Prohibition
- Islamic heritage has become a standard instead of remaining a subject of study
Basis
- Supporting text: «It distinguishes between divine sovereignty and human sovereignty, and holds that prohibition is a pure divine right, whereas the sphere of human reasoning lies in restricting what is permitted and organizing society, not in creating new prohibitions».
Place of the basis in the book
- Book: Religion and Authority.
- Location: in the final section of the book, within the discussion of the limits of legislation and the separation of powers.
- Type of basis: close witness.
- Marker that helps verification: not adding prohibitions
- Reading note: this passage works as evidence because it distinguishes between divine prohibition and human reasoning, and it is very close to the content of the atom.
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 that Shahrur relies on in building the idea.
Related to
Editorial note
In this conception, regulation is not prohibition.