What is meant
Shahrur believes that women’s dress is a social customary matter, not a fixed religious principle. Therefore, it is tied to the customs of society and their change, not to a permanent devotional ruling
The atom’s structure in the atlas
- Type of argument: value-based
- Movement of the argument: makes women’s dress dependent on custom rather than on a fixed religious ruling.
- Central terms: women’s dress, customary, society, change.
- Degree of centrality: central.
It shifts women’s dress from the domain of the fixed devotional ruling to the domain of social custom, linking it to the changing society. In this way, it opens the way to understanding dress as a historical practice subject to change.
Links to help with reading
Support
- Supporting text: “Women’s dress, in his view, is a social customary matter and not a fixed religious principle.”
Place of support in the book
- Book: Umm al-Kitab and Its Elaboration.
- Location: at the beginning of the book, where he emphasizes the difference of interpretive efforts as time and knowledge develop.
- Type of support: close evidence.
- Marker that helps verification: the passage of time and the development of knowledge
- Reading note: the location is suitable as evidence because it states that human interpretive efforts change with time, which is consistent with treating women’s dress as a customary matter.
Degree of documentation
- Level: directly documented
- Meaning of the level: the atom is based on an explicit witness close to the formulation of the claim.
- Limits of the reading: the wording above is an analytical summary, and should not be treated as a verbatim quotation unless the witness is cited textually.
Its function in the book
Its function here is declarative; it establishes a result on which what follows in the argument depends.
Editorial note
The formulation adheres to the limits of the evidence regarding custom and fixedness.