Intended Meaning
The intended meaning is that the closer degree of kinship has priority in the ruling; if the closer one exists, consideration of the more distant one falls away. So the closer in lineage or relation excludes the one after it in distance.
The Atom’s Structure in the Atlas
- Type of argument: legislative
- Movement of the argument: it gives priority in exclusion to the closer one.
- Central terms: the closer, excludes, the more distant.
- Degree of centrality: secondary.
It uses the rule of exclusion to interpret the ordering of those entitled, so that the closer relation takes precedence and what comes after it is set aside when claims compete for entitlement.
Links to help with reading
- Muhammad Shahrur, Toward New Principles for Islamic Jurisprudence
- The Book, the Qur’an, and the Mother of the Book
- The Verse of Light sets a minimum for dress and leaves the rest to custom
Basis
- Supporting text: «with emphasis on the rule: the closer excludes the more distant».
Place of the basis in the book
- Book: Toward New Principles for Islamic Jurisprudence.
- Location: in the first section of the book
- Type of basis: close evidence.
- Marker that helps verification: the aspect and, second, the distance
- Reading note: the passage explains a linguistic/semantic principle concerning proximity and distance, and it is a suitable basis for the rule that the closer excludes the more distant.
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 reading: the wording above is an analytical summary and is not treated as a verbatim quotation unless the witness is cited textually.
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
The atom builds a rule of ordering within the distribution of rights.