Formulation of the Claim
Arkoun links the expansion of religious populism in Europe to the proliferation of mosques, petrodollars, state policies, and migration.
Explanation
This claim indicates that, for Arkoun, the phenomenon is not understood as the result of a single factor, but rather as the outcome of an interplay between religious funding, political transformations, and migration flows. The expansion here is therefore not merely a numerical description, but an effect of a broader intertwining of social and institutional conditions.
In this context, Europe becomes a field in which the results of this intertwining appear, just as they do in the Islamic world itself. Arkoun thus reads religious populism within relations of power and political instrumentalization, rather than within an isolated religious explanation.
Its Place in the Book’s Argument
This atom belongs to Arkoun’s effort to deconstruct modern religious phenomena by connecting them to their historical and social structures, rather than reducing them to a single doctrinal meaning. It is consistent with his recurring interest in how religious discourse is shaped under the pressure of money, politics, and population movement, and in what this produces in terms of the expansion of populism and mobilization.
Limits of the Claim
This atom does not mean that Arkoun confines the explanation of religious populism to Europe alone, nor that he reduces all forms of religiosity to petrodollars or migration. The point is to identify a network of factors that contribute to expansion, not to offer a single comprehensive cause.