What is meant
For him, citizenship is the broadest and highest allegiance within the civil state; it is the framework that regulates the relationship between the individual and the state. This allegiance does not cancel religious or national affiliations; rather, it places them within the bounds of the homeland.
The later OCR sample makes clear that national allegiance does not operate by abolishing ethnic, pan-Arab, or religious allegiance, but by reordering them within the priority of homeland, law, and the public interest.
The atom’s structure in the atlas
- Type of argument: Political
- Argument movement: It elevates citizenship above partial allegiances within the state.
- Central terms: citizenship, allegiance, homeland, civil state.
- Degree of centrality: Pivotal.
It defines the ladder of belonging within the modern state and presents citizenship as an inclusive framework that organizes religious and national allegiances without abolishing them.
Links that help with reading
- Muhammad Shahrur: Religion and Authority
- The Civil State, Religion, and Authority
- Citizenship
- Allegiance
- The Civil State
Basis
- Supporting text: “He states that citizenship is the broadest and highest allegiance in the civil state, and that it does not negate religious or national allegiances but rather organizes them within the framework of the homeland”.
Place of the basis in the book
- Book: Religion and Authority.
- Location: In the final section of the book
- Type of basis: A close witness.
- Verifying marker: citizenship founded on the basis of the free individual human being
- Reading note: The passage links citizenship to justice, freedom, and equality, and makes it a unifying foundation for citizens; it is very close to 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 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
This atom complements the atom of the civil state and explains its structure from the perspective of political belonging.