Argument Type: Methodology

372 pages

• The horizon of fragility and uncertainty
• The three preliminary questions
• Islam within society historically
• Ideology threatens scientific research
• The transition to writing-based societies
• Media and political simplification weakens truth
• Linguistic analysis as a theoretical way out
• Tradition is studied through linguistic and historical methods
• Literal translation fails
• Diagnosis goes beyond the visible symptoms
• Religious education needs anthropological openness
• Ritual repetition consolidates discourse
• Modernity requires clearing historical blockages
• Confusing Islamic and Islamist is an error
• Arabic is an essential language for the renewal of thought
• Unexploited traditional rationality
• Secularism is a topic not thought through enough
• Secularization needs a local path
• The human sciences resist reductionism
• An epistemological rupture is a condition for the future of Muslim societies
• A cognitive break in reading texts
• The translator needs broad specialist knowledge
• The project reconsiders the concept of institution
• The historical-anthropological methodology
• The history of religions is a required teaching subject
• The renewal of terminology is a condition for the renewal of thought
• Intervention by non-specialists harms Islamic studies
• The translation of terms changes until it stabilizes
• Deconstructing historical doctrines
• Three goals for the new study
• The necessity of studying religion scientifically
• An open secularism for studying religion
• The absence of scholarly spaces hinders debate
• Continuing ijtihad instead of imitation
• Arkoun’s critical tools
• Neglecting imagination and memory
• The Bedouins as a social category within the tribal system
• Islam and religious anthropology
• Research begins with the intolerable
• Reflective critical history
• Epistemological periodization reads systems of thought
• Double deconstruction as a method for studying the founder
• Distinguishing between ideas and the episteme
• Qur’anic discourse is analyzed linguistically and semiotically
• External studies neglect cognitive structures
• Reason has multiple uses
• Reading dismantles the ideological palace
• A historical lexicon for understanding the Qur’an
• Texts are understood historically and spatially
• Al-Shafi’i’s ordering of the sources of inference
• Deconstructing the Qur’anic mind
• The limits of reason are historical
• Studying the system of Islamic knowledge
• Foucault changed his analytical method
• Reading the Qur’an requires its historical context
• Reading the Qur’an requires an anthropological method
• Reading the Qur’an as a historical-linguistic reading
• From oral to written: a productive transformation
• Arkoun’s task was historical, not religious
• The impact of modern methods
• Keeping questions scientifically open
• Replacing etymological obsession
• Anthropology goes beyond philology
• Islam as a central example of the religious phenomenon
• Applied Islamology as a scientific method
• The institutional exception for fruitful dialogue
• Recognizing religion requires studying and teaching it
• Geertz’s exploratory research is important
• Scientific research distinguishes between faith and reason
• Epistemological renewal breaks solidarity
• Explanation cannot be reduced to a single factor
• The historical deconstruction of discourse
• Deconstruction precedes the fixing of theological systems
• Distinguishing between the oral and the written
• Humility is a necessary intellectual virtue
• The need for epistemological critique
• Free dialogue needs academic spaces
• A call for an exploratory reason
• Instrumental reason is limited
• Critical reason opens historical understanding
• The social sciences suffer from a theoretical deficit
• The social sciences are necessary for transformation
• Violence results from the absence of preparation
• Critical historical reading
• Historical reading of the religious text
• Historical unveiling as a liberating step
• Major assumptions are hard to overcome
• The thinker analyzes and infers
• Modern methods open up a scientific reading
• The historical-deconstructive method
• The progressive-regressive methodology
• Historical criticism is a condition for understanding
• Scientific critique reveals the historicity of tradition
• The new research workshop on religion
• Teaching religion in a modern way
• Translating scientific studies into Arabic
• The plurality of methods for studying the Qur’an
• The fragmentation of rationality into specializations
• Preference for modern linguistics
• Distinguishing the researcher from the thinker
• Expanding secularism to include spirit and ethics
• Studying religion requires modern methods
• The necessity of problematization and de-naturalizing the obvious
• The necessity of studying societies through their own specific data
• The exploratory postmodern reason
• The value of reason in going beyond tradition
• The project of critiquing Islamic reason
• The methods of the social sciences need to be questioned
• Critique of traditional methodologies
• Critique of objectivity in the social sciences
• The fragility of Islamic sources
• Proposed critical tools
• Excluding Islam weakens the study of religion
• The strategy of scholarly emancipation
• Linguistics
• Militant Islam is not enough for understanding
• Applied Islamology dismantles sectarian divisions
• Applied Islamology opens onto contemporary reality
• Reform needs a historical-scientific approach
• Refusing interpretation is an epistemic abdication
• Historical analysis goes beyond description
• Distinguishing between the origin and later layers
• Distinguishing between religion and the historical framework
• Historical truth and traditional narrative
• Scientific discourse and religious discourse are different
• Sharia is not merely a textual reading
• Religious reason is studied historically and socially
• Open secularization and the history of religions
• The human sciences reveal historical mechanisms
• Islamic thought opens onto the social sciences
• Philology is not an end in itself
• Philology is a necessary first stage
• A modern historical reading of sacred texts is required
• The book is addressed to the general public
• Modern linguistics separates the word from the thing
• Muslim societies are a laboratory for the social sciences
• Women need sociological study
• Religious institutes open onto the human sciences
• The historical fallacy must be avoided
• New methods are necessary for understanding Islam
• The archaeological and genealogical method
• Historical criticism precedes philosophical criticism
• Newcomers to the religious field should open tradition to the human sciences
• Revelation as a multidisciplinary entry point
• The decline of philosophy needs a multi-method explanation
• The restraint of academic language
• Historical teaching of religions is more suitable for the public sphere
• Arkoun’s methodological distinction from Orientalism
• The expansion of applied Islamology
• An epistemological revolution is a condition for human rights
• The study of religion needs new terminology
• Studying religion historically
• The study of religious reason should be historical and social, not theological
• The question of Muhammad’s intention should be approached cautiously
• The absence of modern critical sciences
• Understanding Arkoun requires the human sciences
• Understanding discourse requires epistemological critique
• Revealing the historical origin of concepts
• The method of the historian and the philosopher
• The Islam-West conflict is fueled by scholarly neglect
• Critiquing imitation and reproducing methods
• Critiquing Durkheim does not reject development
• He is influenced more by sciences and methodologies than by individuals
• Islamizing the sciences hinders modern sciences
• Introducing revelation into the human sciences
• Calling upon the human sciences
• Islam needs critical knowledge
• Reform needs reflective theology
• Reform needs historical knowledge
• Tradition needs archaeological excavation
• Deconstruction for analyzing the social imaginary
• The need for a new epistemology
• The need for an emerging new reason
• Modernity is understood sociologically
• A call for an archaeological-genealogical reading
• The programmatic character in Arkoun’s thought
• Doctrines need critical historicization
• The new reason needs material force
• An epistemological reading of history
• The critical historical approach is necessary for understanding
• Scientific comparison precedes judgments
• Access to divine speech is indirect
• Defining cognitive paradigms
• Revising knowledge about Islam
• Studying the three religions without comparison
• The necessity of an ascending emergent reason
• The multiple meanings of secularization
• The debate on religious reform is necessary and rich
• Critique of the Islamization of knowledge
• Critique of the universalist textual approach
• Tools of the contemporary researcher
• Four Orientalist trends
• Arkoun calls for a scientific critical reading
• Occasions of revelation are not the same as context
• The horizon of fragility and uncertainty
• The priority of historical and anthropological study
• Projecting later concepts onto the text
• A critical historical reconstruction of tradition
• Historians’ neglect of mental data
• The connection of religious reason to the human sciences