What Is Meant Here
What is meant is not the removal of religion from the moral sphere, but the distinction between its moral authority and the functions of the state. The text places religion’s universal moral authority on one side, and legislation, execution, and adjudication as functions of the state on the other.
What Is Attributed to Shahrur
The cited passage states that the book “affirms the separation between religion and authority, and between religion’s universal moral authority and the state’s legislative, executive, and judicial functions.” Accordingly, what is directly established is this separation between the moral sphere attributed to religion and the specified functions of the state.
The Atlas’s Explanation
The atlas reads the statement as defining the boundaries of the two spheres, rather than as a detailed description of a particular system of government: religion occupies the position of moral authority, while the state carries out its legislative, executive, and judicial functions. For reading in the broader context: Muhammad Shahrur, Religion and Authority, and The Civil State, Religion, and Authority.
Limited Inference
Within the wording of the cited passage, this separation prevents the conflation of religion’s moral authority with the three named functions of the state. However, it does not specify the procedures or institutions of this separation, nor the detailed sources of legislation.
Open Question and Limits of the Evidence
This atom is connected to the page Historical jurisprudence and civil law are separate from it, but the present passage does not mention historical jurisprudence or civil law. Establishing this detailed connection therefore requires an independent passage, and it should not be read into the meaning of the quotation itself.
Religion and Authority · Historical jurisprudence and civil law are separate from it