Formulation of the claim
Arkoun holds that religious education is not complete if it remains confined to presenting official institutions and texts, and that understanding it requires openness to social anthropology.
Explanation
Social anthropology helps us understand beliefs as they are lived in everyday life, in customs, representations, and social relations. In this sense, the history of religions is no longer merely a presentation of what books say or what institutions decide, but becomes a broader study of the human being as religion is actually lived.
Its place in the book’s argument
This idea appears within Arkoun’s project of broadening the tools used to understand religion rather than narrowing them. The aim is not to exclude religion from knowledge, but to place it within a horizon that takes account of social and cultural experience, and reveals what narrow school-based or institutional approaches may overlook.
Brief evidence
“(A) The scientific studies devoted in the West to the discourse of revelation exclude the Qur’an from their field and focus their efforts only on the Torah and the Gospels. This is an old position in the West that does not recognize the Qur’an as part of the discourse of revelation. One of Mohammed Arkoun’s struggles lies in putting a final end to this historical exclusion and applying scientific and historical study to the Qur’an as
Related links
Critique and Ijtihad in Islamic Thought, Where Is Contemporary Islamic Thought?