Intended Meaning
Shahrur distinguishes between the forbidden as a divine ruling and the prohibited as something imposed by social customs or laws. For him, fahisha is forbidden, whereas some forms of marriage or divorce may be socially or legally prohibited without being religiously forbidden.
The Atom’s Structure in the Atlas
- Type of argument: legislative
- Argument movement: divine prohibition differs from social or legal prohibition.
- Key terms: the forbidden, the prohibited, fahisha, ijtihad.
- Degree of centrality: original.
This shifts the ruling from conflating religion with custom to distinguishing between what is legislatively forbidden and what is organizationally prohibited, thereby rearranging the sources of obligation.
Reading Aids
- Muhammad Shahrur: Toward New Foundations for Islamic Jurisprudence
- Legislation, Limits, and Prohibition
- Distinguishing Between the Forbidden and the Prohibited Frees Jurisprudence from Terminological Confusion
Grounds
- Supporting text: “He distinguishes between the forbidden and the prohibited: fahisha is forbidden, whereas some forms of marriage or divorce belong to the domain of social/legal prohibition, not divine prohibition.”
Place of Support in the Book
- Book: Toward New Foundations for Islamic Jurisprudence.
- Location: within the treatment of the difference between prohibition and prohibition by prevention in the first section of the book
- Type of support: close evidence.
- Verifying marker: the forbidden witness testimony
- Reading note: this passage is suitable as evidence because it distinguishes between what is forbidden and what is prohibited in juristic usage.
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 formulation above is an analytical summary and should not be treated as a verbatim quotation unless the witness is transmitted word for word.
Its Function in the Book
Its function here is definitional; it sets out a meaning or conceptual distinction on which Shahrur relies in building the idea.
Related to
Editorial Note
An important atom for understanding the limits of prohibition and social regulation at the same time.