The Response to Repentance Determines Acceptance and Exclusion

Formulation of the Claim

Response to the call to repentance determines the course of acceptance and exclusion

Explanation

The text presents the sura as a framework that organizes acceptance, rejection, inclusion, and exclusion, insofar as response, or lack of response, is the principle by which these are governed. The formulation of repentance here comes as part of this general framework, not as a separate detail detached from the structure of the sura as the evidence passage presents it.

Its Place in the Book’s Argument

This idea falls within the reading that tracks how meaning is constructed within the sura through mechanisms of distinguishing between those who are accepted and those who are excluded, along with what is associated with that in terms of the boundaries of belonging and incorporation into the discourse.

What the Atom Does Not Say

The evidence passage does not explicitly mention the call to repentance, nor does it spell out its conditions or tie the judgment to it alone. Nor does it offer an independent elaboration of the mechanism of repentance so much as describe the general organization of the concepts of acceptance, rejection, inclusion, and exclusion.

Brief Evidence

It is driven by social actors with different intellectual horizons and divergent immediate interests. They—the social actors—are engaged in outbidding one another regarding the stakes of truth and salvation itself in the afterlife, stakes that are also defended by other groups competing with Muhammad’s community. By this we mean the Jews, the Christian Christians, the polytheists, the unbelievers, and the hypocrites. It is well known that their names are stamped by, or affected by, a strategy of inclusion and acceptance, or rejection and exclusion, according to their response to the call that invites them to proclaim repentance and join the community of believers or Muslims. If they declare it, they are accepted and incorporated; if they refuse repentance, they are shunned, despised, and declared unbelievers. We note that the concept of a singular

Related Links

• Critique and Ijtihad in Islamic Thought
• Critique of Islamic Reason
• Text and History