The Meaning of the Concept in This Book
In Mohammed Arkoun’s work, this concept refers to a historical structure of patterns of thinking within Islam, not to an immutable essence. It is linked to scholastic closure, the decline of ijtihad, the inflation of political theology, and to everything that makes religious reason an object of critique and examination rather than submission.
Its Place in the Book’s Argument
“Islamic reason” occupies a central place in the argument the book builds against contenting oneself with rooting in tradition or with rhetorical reform. The issue is not understood as a passing defect, but as the result of a long history of closure, scholasticism, the decline of philosophy, the dominance of conservatism, and the politicization of religion. The concept is therefore directly tied to the idea that renewing religion requires a critique of reason, and that self-critique comes before attributing the crisis to colonialism or to the outside.
How It Works Within the Atlas
Within the atlas, the concept functions as a point of intersection among several trajectories: the divergence of historical paths between Europe and Islam, the persistence of inherited belief, the effect of taboos in disabling critique, and its relation to the individual body and the social body, as well as to language, memory, and identity. It also sheds light on the relation between Islamic reason and applied Islamology, on the distinction between thought and Islamic philosophy, and on the shift from repetition and scholasticism after the thirteenth century to the need for a new critical reading.