Formulation of the Claim
Arkoun holds that it is part of the project of modern reason and the human sciences to apply their methods to the Qur’anic tradition.
Explanation
This application is not meant to abolish the specificity of religious experience or reduce it to an external reading, but rather to approach tradition as a field that can be understood and analyzed with modern cognitive tools. For Arkoun, this approach makes it possible to move beyond confinement to traditional reading, without denying the religious value of the text.
The importance of this claim appears in the way it links the study of tradition to the question of method: how is the religious text to be read within a broader historical and epistemic horizon? Thus the point is not to replace faith with analysis, but to open a space for critical understanding within tradition itself.
Its Place in the Book’s Argument
This atom belongs to Arkoun’s broader thesis, which calls for rethinking the Islamic tradition through the tools of modern thought, especially when the matter concerns the Qur’an and the discourses that have surrounded it. It also falls within the context of his critique of closed readings that confine tradition within the limits of inherited exegesis alone.
Limits of the Claim
This claim should not be made to mean the negation of religion or the reduction of the Qur’an to an external object of academic analysis only. Nor does it mean that it offers a final judgment on tradition; rather, it establishes only the legitimacy of the method.