Formulating the claim
The juristic reading regulates religious language and turns it into a legislative language.
Explanation
In this claim, Arkoun shows that the juristic reading does not merely seek to understand the religious text; rather, it rearranges it within an institutional logic that imposes specific rules on it. At that point, religious meaning is no longer open to multiple significations, but is formulated as something amenable to codification and control.
As a result, religious language itself is read through the needs of jurisprudence and organization, not through its original movement in Qur’anic discourse or in the broader religious discourse. For that reason, this language becomes closer to legislative formulation than to a religious expression of multiple facets.
Its place in the book’s argument
This atom falls within Arkoun’s critique of the transformation of religious discourse into a closed discourse dominated by the juristic institution. It is directly connected to the idea that some readings did not merely explain religion, but reshaped its language according to the requirements of regulation and codification, which serves Arkoun’s thesis about the need to free religious thought from the monopoly of institutional reading.
Limits of the claim
This claim does not mean denying the value of jurisprudence or denying its historical role; rather, it describes a specific effect it has had in redirecting religious language. Nor should it be taken as a sweeping judgment on every religious reading or every juristic use.