Formulation of the claim
Arkoun criticizes the idea of the «one true school» as a formulation that leads to the exclusion of all other interpretations and schools.
Explanation
Arkoun sees this idea as doing more than merely preferring one reading over another; it works to confine the religious field within a single perspective, thereby narrowing the possibility of difference and rendering interpretive plurality irrelevant. He links the dismantling of this critical structure to the necessity of introducing modernity into the religious field through critique.
Its place in the book’s argument
This idea appears within Arkoun’s critique of the dominance of the traditional theological perspective, and in a broader context that reopens the relationship between text, history, and interpretation. It supports a general line in the book that connects the renewal of religious understanding with breaking the mechanisms of exclusion produced by closed reading.
What the atom does not say
It does not say that Arkoun rejects the entire interpretive heritage, nor that he replaces one school with another; rather, it focuses on critiquing the mechanism of monopolization itself.