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Islam

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The Meaning of the Concept in This Book

Islam is presented here as a historical and human formation, not as a fixed essence or a closed definition. The sense on which this atlas works is that Islam took shape within languages, cultures, and practices, and then underwent successive transformations from spiritual submission to collective and political organization, reaching later stages of ideological stagnation.

Its Place in the Book’s Argument

This concept lies at the heart of the argument put forward by The Human Formation of Islam. For Arkoun, Islam cannot be understood through a superficial reading or an external narrative, but through an epistemological and historical critique that reveals how cognitive structures shaped modes of understanding, religiosity, and interpretation.

From here, the concept is linked to the book’s arguments about:

  • the initial openness that the schools later closed off.
  • the far-reaching interpretive rupture.
  • the movement of Islamic history from creative plurality to doctrinal and cognitive closure.
  • the exhaustion of ijtihad and the resulting halt in generativity.
  • the tying of religious practices to balances of power and to the political use of religion.

How It Works Within the Atlas

This concept functions within the atlas as a point of connection between historical reading and critical reading of the Islamic field. It links:

  • understanding Qur’anic Islam as submission to God,
  • the historical shift of its meaning into a combat identity in some contexts,
  • and the critique of schools and readings that consolidated closure instead of plurality.

It also opens onto broader questions in the atlas such as:

  • how the episteme shapes visible systems of ideas.
  • how epistemological periodization reveals cognitive structures rather than merely recounting history.
  • how religious anthropology intersects with the history of local religiosity.
  • how criticism of Orientalism meets the distinction between scientific inquiry and the epistemological problem.

Mohammed Arkoun Atlas