What is meant
For Shahrur, the will falls within the domain of private justice inside the family, unlike inheritance, which is tied to public justice. Therefore, it is understood as a tool for regulating rights and obligations within the private family sphere.
The atom’s structure in the atlas
- Type of argument: legislative
- Movement of the argument: it makes the will a tool of private justice within the family.
- Key terms: the will, private justice, the family.
- Degree of centrality: primary.
It links the will to the regulation of direct family rights and gives it a corrective function within the private sphere, in contrast to public inheritance.
Reading aids
- Muhammad Shahrur: Toward New Principles for Islamic Jurisprudence
- The Book, the Qur’an, and the Mother of the Book
Basis
- Supporting text: “He distinguishes between the will and inheritance in a decisive way: the will belongs to the private sphere and private justice, while inheritance belongs to the public sphere and public justice.”
Basis location in the book
- Book: Toward New Principles for Islamic Jurisprudence.
- Location: within the treatment of the difference between the will and inheritance in the middle section of the book
- Type of basis: close witness.
- Verification marker: The will realizes private justice
- Reading note: This passage is suitable as evidence because it explicitly states that the will realizes private justice, in contrast to inheritance, which realizes public justice.
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 quoted 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 constructing the idea.
Editorial note
The atom defines the scope of the will within the family.