Formulation of the claim
Arkoun links the denial of the historicity of the Qur’an to the triumph of the Hanbali thesis that the Qur’an is uncreated.
Explanation
In this context, the Qur’an is not presented as a text that entered history and took shape within its conditions, but as a transcendent speech purified of historical becoming. Denying its historicity therefore becomes part of a doctrinal vision that places the text outside the conditions of historical and critical understanding.
For Arkoun, this connection is inseparable from a shift in interpretive authority; the triumph of the Hanbali position helped to consolidate a view that closes off the possibility of questioning the text within a historical horizon. In this sense, Arkoun is not speaking of an abstract theological issue, but of its effect on the formation of religious consciousness and on the limits of thinking about the Qur’an.
Its place in the book’s argument
This atom belongs to Arkoun’s critique of the structure of Islamic thought when doctrinal propositions are privileged over historical examination. It falls within a broader context linking the formation of orthodoxy, the fixing of the limits of what can be said about the Qur’an, and the disabling of any reading of it within its human historicity.
Limits of the claim
This atom does not mean reducing the matter to Hanbalism alone, nor does it deny the multiplicity of factors that contributed to the consolidation of this position. Nor should it be taken as an all-encompassing judgment on everything related to the Hanbali tradition or to the positions of scholars in general.