- Title: Towards New Foundations for Islamic Jurisprudence
- Author: Muhammad Shahrur
- Number of reading units: 10
General Summary
The book presents a project to re-found Islamic jurisprudence on a new reading of the Wise Revelation,
based on distinguishing between ontology, process, and becoming, and between the fixed divine text and the shifting human understanding.
Shahrur criticizes the juristic heritage because it conflated message, prophethood, and rule,
and made political and linguistic history the final measure of the meanings of the Qur’an and its rulings.
He holds that many inherited exegetical sciences, such as occasions of revelation and abrogating and abrogated verses,
contributed to shrinking the universality of the message and turning it into a contextual or local text.
He also establishes a structural-linguistic reading that rejects synonymy, filler, and redundancy,
making the authority belong to the text over the rule, not the reverse, and distinguishing divine prohibition from social or legal restriction.
His project extends to reconsidering inheritance and bequest, marriage and divorce, dress, guardianship, and right-hand possession,
affirming that the aim is to free jurisprudence from rigidity and build contemporary foundations that take both the text and reality into account.
Central Theses
- Understanding religion and legislation is only valid through a triad: ontology, process, and becoming.
- Inherited jurisprudence is not the Sharia itself, but a historical human understanding of it.
- The conflict after the Prophet’s death was over rule and legitimacy more than over the message.
- The authority of the text takes precedence over inherited grammatical and juristic rules.
- The Qur’an is free of synonymy, verbosity, and redundancy, and every word has a semantic function.
- Bequest takes precedence over inheritance, and inheritance is a general fallback law when there is no bequest.
- The Muhammadan message inaugurated an era of equality, pluralism, and freedom of belief.
- Prohibition is God’s right alone, whereas the state and society deal with restriction and regulation.
- Many traditional rulings concerning women, dress, and divorce resulted from conflating the historical with the Qur’anic.
- The required method is a contemporary reading that rebuilds the foundations of jurisprudence on a new basis.
Key Concepts
- Ontology: self-standing existence, or a thing as it is.
- Process: the movement of time and the ongoing transformation in existence.
- Becoming: the outcome or final end of transformation.
- The Wise Revelation: the Qur’anic revelation as a text fixed in itself yet ever renewed in understanding.
- The decisive: what has established its meaning and formed the foundations of the message.
- The ambiguous: what is tied to cosmos, history, and prophethood and admits interpretation.
- Islam’s piety: adherence to prohibitions and bequests without concession.
- Faith’s piety: the domain of rituals and concessions in cases of excuse.
- Bequest: a specific disposition of wealth after death according to the needs of the bequeather.
- Inheritance: the general distribution of the estate in the absence of a bequest.
- Guardianship: a leadership responsibility related to competence and spending, not to maleness as such.
- Dress: what achieves covering and protection, with a broader significance than the veil.
- Right-hand possession: a historical contractual relation that is not to be understood as perpetual slavery.
- The prohibited: what the text explicitly forbids.
- The restricted: what authority or society forbids without it being religiously prohibited.
Shahrur’s Method in This Book
- He builds his ideas on comprehensive philosophical propositions and then returns them to Qur’anic interpretation.
- He critically revisits linguistic and juristic heritage, especially the idea of synonymy, occasions of revelation, and abrogation.
- He reads the verses through their internal structure, not through external reports alone.
- He constantly distinguishes between the divine text and historical human understanding.
- He employs linguistic, derivational, and dialectical analysis together.
- He uses historical and social comparison to explain the formation of jurisprudence.
- He makes contemporary reality part of the process of understanding and ijtihad.
- He divides rulings into a fixed divine element and a changing human element, and redistributes the field between them.
- He connects interpretation to modern scientific method, statistics, and contemporary cognitive techniques.
- He seeks to establish new foundations for jurisprudence rather than settling for partial reforms in the old.
Issues on Which He Repeatedly Focuses
- The nature of the Qur’anic text and its relation to interpretation and historical understanding.
- The political struggle after the Prophet’s death and the legitimization of rule.
- Critique of occasions of revelation and abrogating/abrogated verses.
- Inheritance, bequest, and estate division.
- Marriage, divorce, guardianship, and plural marriage.
- Dress, the veil, nakedness, and women.
- The prohibited, the restricted, concession, and necessity.
- The decisive and the ambiguous, messengerhood and prophethood.
- Right-hand possession and its relation to the end of slavery.
- Equality, freedom, and pluralism in the civil state.
Keywords for Quick Return
- Ontology
- Process
- Becoming
- The Wise Revelation
- The decisive and the ambiguous
- Occasions of revelation
- Abrogating and abrogated verses
- Authority of the text
- Bequest and inheritance
- Guardianship
- Divorce
- Dress and the veil
- Right-hand possession
- Freedom and pluralism
- Inherited jurisprudence
Atlas Layer
The Book’s Thesis in the Atlas
This book establishes new foundations for jurisprudence that begin from the fixedness of the Qur’an and the historicity of understanding, and distinguish between divine prohibition and social or legal restriction. It rebuilds jurisprudence on the basis of textual meaning and changing reality, while freeing legislation from historical rigidity.
Reading Axes
- The foundations of the new jurisprudence rest on distinguishing the fixity of the text from the historicity of understanding.
- Legislation is governed by textual limits and the distinction between prohibition and restriction.
- The message reconstructs social life and the family on the basis of equality and contract.
- Women’s dress is understood from the text as a limit and a function, not as a fixed inherited symbol.
- The universality of the message requires a Qur’anic reading independent of historicism and report.
The Structure on Which the Book Is Built
- Distinguishes between ontology, process, and becoming.
- Separates message, prophethood, and rule.
- Redefines the prohibited, the restricted, bequest, and inheritance.
- Links rulings to reality and contract, not to inherited symbols.
Major Groupings
- The foundations of the new jurisprudence rest on distinguishing the fixity of the text from the historicity of understanding.
- Legislation is governed by textual limits and the distinction between prohibition and restriction.
- The message reconstructs social life and the family on the basis of equality and contract.
- The universality of the message requires a Qur’anic reading independent of historicism and report.
- Women’s dress is understood from the text as a limit and a function, not as a fixed inherited symbol.
Book Introduction
The book presents an attempt to build new foundations for juristic understanding, not merely a partial juristic disagreement. What matters most in it is shifting the questions from: what did the heritage say? to: what does the text regulate, and what does it leave to reality and choice?
Layer Map
This page is not a copy of the book, nor an alternative summary of it, but rather a reading map of its concepts, arguments, and trajectories. It is recommended to refer to the original text to understand the full context.