Intended Meaning
The Muhkamm, in the author’s view, consists of the fixed verses of the revelation, and they represent the Mother of the Book He makes it a legislative foundation because it contains the limits, commands, prohibitions, and obligations as stable elements
The Atom’s Structure in the Atlas
- Type of argument: definitional
- Movement of the argument: it links the Muhkamm to the Mother of the Book and makes it a fixed legislative foundation.
- Central terms: the Muhkamm, the Mother of the Book, the limits.
- Degree of centrality: pivotal.
This atom makes the Muhkamm a controlling framework for legislative meaning, and clarifies that stability does not lie in the entire text but in a specific layer that is treated as the reference for the rest of the detail.
Links that help with reading
- Muhammad Shahrur, Drying Up the Springs of Terrorism
- The Book, the Qur’an, and the Mother of the Book
- the Muhkamm
- the Mother of the Book
- The verses of fighting and the Muhammadan narratives do not legislate absolute violence
Grounding
- Supporting text: “The Muhkamm: the fixed verses that represent the Mother of the Book and contain the limits, commands, prohibitions, and obligations.”
Where the grounding appears in the book
- Book: Drying Up the Springs of Terrorism.
- Location: near the beginning of the book
- Type of grounding: close witness.
- Marker that helps verification: the muhkamm verses, which form the Mother of the Book
- Reading note: the location defines the muhkamm verses as the Mother of the Book and describes them as fixed and limited in prohibitions, which is very close to the atom.
Degree of documentation
- Level: directly documented
- Meaning of the level: the atom rests on an explicit witness close to the wording of the claim.
- Limits of the reading: the formulation above is an analytical summary, and should not be treated as a verbatim quotation unless the witness is cited word for word.
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
It can be linked to the atoms of limits and prohibitions to understand the whole system.