This topic takes on a methodological meaning in the atlas. It names the approach through which Arkoun proposes the study of Islam and the tradition using the tools of history, anthropology, and discourse analysis, rather than limiting oneself to schoolbook explanation or identity-based apologetics. It is not a purely technical substitute, but an attempt to reorganize the field of inquiry around religion, knowledge, and power.
This topic appears in more than one book. In Islamic Thought: Critique and Ijtihad, applied Islamology appears as a tool that breaks with closure and rebuilds the instruments of reading. In Readings in the Qur’an, it takes shape through a historical and linguistic analysis of Qur’anic discourse, and through criticism of both the orientalist reading and the orthodox reading. In The Human Formation of Islam, it is tied to the deconstruction of the epistemic and to showing how religion is formed within memory, time, and institutions. It also converges with Toward a Comparative History of the Monotheistic Religions in broadening the horizon of historical comparison, and with Battles for Humanism in Islamic Contexts in its relation to recovering the human and meaning.
Related concepts:
Related reading paths:
This heading is placed here to gather the passages that speak about method, about expanding the tools of study, and about moving beyond the sharp divide between faith and the human sciences in Arkoun’s approach.