Formulation of the Claim
Critiquing modern legitimacy requires moving beyond sufficiency in Sharia and the prophetic function, without abolishing the need for religious meaning.
Why Do These Elements Belong Together?
These elements belong together because they delineate the limits of relying on the religious model when it is asked to explain modern legitimacy. Sharia and the prophetic function alone are not sufficient for modern legitimacy shows that Sharia and the prophetic function are not sufficient by themselves, because modern legitimacy is also connected to political and epistemic transformations that cannot be settled by a direct appeal to inherited tradition. Thus, sufficiency in Sharia is no longer an adequate answer to the questions of the present.
At the same time, this reconsideration does not mean that modernity has abolished the need for meaning. Modernity did not abolish the need for religious meaning explains that the religious dimension remained present after the Enlightenment, and that the search for meaning did not cease. Then Arkounian foundations rest on fragility and uncertainty opens a critical horizon that does not settle into final certainty, but rather revisits both the religious and the modern models together.
Place of the Cluster in the Book
This page appears within Readings in the Qur’an, where questions of Sharia, modernity, and meaning intersect within a single construction. It belongs to the passages that do not merely describe the tension between religious reference and modern transformation, but also connect it to a critical stance based on reconsideration and on refusing submission to closed certainties. It therefore links the book’s argument in critiquing exclusive reliance on the inherited form with keeping the question of meaning open in modern times.
Elements of the Cluster
- Sharia and the prophetic function alone are not sufficient for modern legitimacy
- Modernity did not abolish the need for religious meaning
- Arkounian foundations rest on fragility and uncertainty
Brief Evidence
This page examines the tension between religious reference and modern transformation, without siding with a closed solution. It indicates that Sharia alone is not sufficient to establish modern legitimacy, just as modernity cannot abolish the human need for meaning. Thus, elements of critical reconsideration converge here with the question of the foundation on which legitimacy rests in modern times. The result is an intellectual horizon that rejects final certainties and keeps the question open between function and meaning.
Conclusion
This cluster sets a double limit: Sharia alone is not sufficient to establish modern legitimacy, and modernity does not abolish the need for meaning. From here, a critical horizon is defined: one based on reconsideration and fragility rather than sufficiency in any final certainty.