The Idea
Arkoun sees jurisprudence as having not merely explained the religious text, but made it the basis for formulating rulings related to war and jihad. The meaning here is that the text came to be read from within the needs of organization and control, not solely from within its original signification. Jurisprudence thus appears as a field for transforming meaning into practical rules that serve a specific historical reality.
Concise Formulation
The jurisprudential tradition: exploited the text to produce rulings on war and jihad
Its Place in the Book’s Argument
This idea comes within Arkoun’s critique of how the jurisprudential tradition operated on the text. He is not so much discussing the ruling in itself as pointing to the shift of the text from the horizon of new legitimacy to the horizon of codification. In this way, the question of war and jihad becomes an example of how jurisprudential reading is used to consolidate the authority of interpretation, not to uncover the text’s original meaning.
Why It Matters
This idea helps explain Arkoun’s tendency to dismantle jurisprudential certitude when it turns into a final answer to the questions of history. It shows that the problem lies not in the text itself, but in the way the tradition formulated broad rulings through it. The idea therefore reveals the limits of inherited reading when it claims to be the only possible meaning.
Reading Questions
- How does Arkoun distinguish between the original meaning of the text and its jurisprudential use?
- What does the example of war and jihad reveal about the relationship between jurisprudence and historical reality?
Degree of Documentation
Medium: the claim is composed from more than one passage within the book’s material.