Formulation of the claim
The non-religious modern reader receives supernatural elements as literary formulations rather than direct facts of faith.
Explanation
This reader tends to move mythical stories from the realm of literal assent to the realm of understanding and interpretation. The supernatural elements thus become, for him, part of the language of narrative and of the symbolic, historical, and psychological meanings it opens up.
This means that modern reading does not stop at receiving the text as it is, but seeks to return it to the conditions of its production and its context. In this way, the status of the supernatural element shifts from being an object of belief to being material for analysis.
Its place in the book’s argument
This atom appears within Arkoun’s effort to show the difference in how texts are received between a traditional reader who affirms the literal religious meaning and a modern reader who approaches texts according to the logic of interpretation and critique. It supports his broader thesis about the movement of religious discourse from the authority of submission to the horizon of historical reading.
It is also connected to Arkoun’s concern to reveal the distance between religious narrative and the ways it is understood in modern times. The supernatural element is not eliminated here; rather, it is repositioned within the horizon of reading opened by modern consciousness.
Limits of the claim
This atom should not be burdened with a final judgment on all modern readers, nor should it be turned into an absolute denial of the religious dimension in the text. It describes a tendency in reception more than it puts forward a comprehensive philosophical stance on the unseen.
Brief evidence
After we have reached this point in the discussion, the problem becomes the following: how can we speak about the wondrous and astonishing in the Qur’an without adopting a reductive stance toward religious language? That is, without risking turning the religious text into something ordinary, like any other text. This question deserves to be raised, especially if we know that the nature of the wondrous and astonishing and its function change according to the nature of the recipient, whether he is a believing, religious person or not. As for the believer, we note that the wondrous and astonishing poses no problem at all, because it is nothing but a manifestation of the higher intellect that cannot be fathomed and is capable of everything (what Muslims call the unseen). Thus, it has a major and ultimate cognitive function that cannot be encompassed. For when human beings leave
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