The intended meaning
Muhammad Shahrur distinguishes between the Wise Revelation as a fixed text, and jurisprudence as a human, historical understanding of the text. Therefore, jurisprudence for him is not a sacred text, but a human exertion that changes with time and circumstances.
The atom’s structure in the atlas
- Type of argument: definitional
- Argument movement: it makes jurisprudence a human, historical understanding of the text, not a sacred text.
- Central terms: jurisprudence, historical human understanding, the Wise Revelation, ijtihad.
- Degree of centrality: original.
This atom establishes the difference between text and interpretation, placing jurisprudence in the category of changing human effort, and preventing its equation with the fixed sacred.
Links that help with reading
- Muhammad Shahrur The Qur’an in Contemporary Thought
- Critique of Heritage, Jurisprudence, and Interpretation
- Jurisprudence
- The Wise Revelation
Reliance
- Supporting text: «The Wise Revelation as fixed in text and variable in content, and jurisprudence as a historical human understanding».
Place of reliance in the book
- Book: The Qur’an in Contemporary Thought.
- Location: in the first section of the book
- Type of reliance: close evidence.
- Mark that helps verification: its relativity
- Reading note: this location is suitable as support because it speaks of the relativity of knowledge and its development, which is consistent with viewing jurisprudence as a human understanding.
Degree of documentation
- Level: directly documented
- Meaning of the level: the atom rests on an explicit witness close to the wording of the claim.
- Reading limits: the wording above is an analytical summary, and should not be treated as a verbatim quotation unless the witness is transmitted verbatim.
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.
Editorial note
This atom is among the most foundational atoms in the overall structure.