Intended Meaning
The author holds that the phrase «killing children for fear of poverty» does not mean abortion, but rather the killing of a newborn after birth out of fear of poverty. The intended meaning is an assault on the child already in existence, not the termination of the fetus before birth.
Atom Structure in the Atlas
- Type of argument: interpretive
- Movement of the argument: restricts the phrase to the killing of the newborn after birth, not to abortion.
- Key terms: killing children, fear of poverty, newborn, abortion.
- Degree of centrality: pivotal.
It removes the confusion between abortion and killing a newborn, returning the text to its direct subject and preventing a later meaning from being imposed on it.
Reading Aids
- Muhammad Shahrur’s Umm al-Kitab and Its Detailing
- Legislation, Limits, and Prohibition
- Qur’anic narratives fall within the cognitive dimension, not legislation
Basis
- Supporting text: «killing children for fear of poverty is not abortion; the text speaks of killing the newborn after birth».
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 the reading: the formulation above is an analytical summary and is not treated as a verbatim quotation unless the witness is quoted textually.
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
The temporal distinction is part of the meaning.