What is meant
This concept means that God alone is the one who holds authority over what is lawful and unlawful, and that final legislation is confined to the Book This authority is not granted to jurisprudential ijtihads or to transmitted reports, but remains one of the exclusive attributes of divine legislation alone
The atom’s structure in the atlas
- Type of argument: political
- Argument movement: confines the authority to rule and prohibit to God alone
- Key terms: sovereignty, God, lawfulness, prohibition, legislation.
- Degree of centrality: central.
This atom links creed with legislative authority, as it denies human participation in the foundation of prohibition. It thus enters directly into the discussion of religious sovereignty and its limits in Shahrur’s thought.
Links that help with reading
- Muhammad Shahrur, Religion and Power
- The Civil State, Religion, and Power
- Sovereignty
- God
- Prohibition
Basis
- Supporting text: «It proceeds to establish the concept of sovereignty: judgment belongs to God alone in what is lawful and unlawful, and the final divine legislation is confined to the Book, not to jurisprudential ijtihads or transmitted reports».
Basis in the book
- Book: Religion and Power.
- Location: at the beginning of the book, within its establishment of the concept of sovereignty and its confrontation with the authority of individual rulers.
- Type of basis: close witness.
- Mark to help verification: sovereignty
- Reading note: This passage is suitable as support because it ties sovereignty to God and makes it a guarantee against human despotism.
Degree of documentation
- Level: compositionally documented
- Meaning of the level: the atom relies on more than one witness or on a clear composition of similar phrases.
- Reason for classification: the passages state God’s exclusive sovereignty and legislation.
- Limits of reading: the wording 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.
Related to
Editorial note
Defining it here is equivalent to stripping legitimacy from human expansion in prohibition.