What is meant
The human sovereignty of the Book is a stage in which legislative and interpretive authority passes to the human being and in which the unseen connection to God remains through the Qur’an, not through miracles This means that legislation becomes a human act within the guidance of the Book
The atom’s structure in the atlas
- Type of argument: Political
- Movement of the argument: Transfers the authority of legislation and ijtihad to the human being within the guidance of the Book.
- Key terms: the human sovereignty of the Book, legislation, ijtihad.
- Degree of centrality: Primary.
This atom shows the shift of the center of legislative action from direct unseen intervention to the human being, while the Book remains the value-based reference; thus, the idea of responsible human legislation is established.
Links that help with reading
- Muhammad Shahrur: Religion and Power
- The Civil State, Religion, and Power
- Divine Sovereignty Is a Stage of Direct Domination
Basis
- Supporting text: “The human sovereignty of the Book: a stage in which legislative and interpretive authority passes to the human being, with the unseen connection to God through the Qur’an, not through miracles.”
Degree of documentation
- Level: directly documented
- Meaning of the level: the atom rests on an explicit witness close to the formulation of the claim.
- Limits of reading: the formulation above is an analytic summary and should not be treated as a literal quotation unless the witness is transmitted verbatim.
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
It is considered one of the key atoms in the conception of the relationship between religion and the state.