Formulation of the claim
Scientific thought in the Islamic milieu remained permeated by sacred religious values, and it did not separate from sanctity in the way that happened in modern Europe.
Explanation
Arkoun places this claim within a comparison between the scientific experience in the Islamic milieu and European modernity. What is meant is that knowledge, in the Islamic context he is discussing, did not free itself from the religious reference that surrounded it in its value-laden and symbolic sense, but remained intertwined with it.
He uses this contrast to highlight the difference in how knowledge and learning took shape in the two contexts. The issue here is not to deny the existence of scientific thought, but to indicate that its presence remained tied to a horizon of sanctity, unlike what became established in modern Europe through a clearer separation between the two spheres.
Its place in the book’s argument
This atom enters into the broader argument Arkoun builds about the differing conditions for the formation of modern thought in the Islamic world and in Europe. It is connected to what he presents as a contrast between the continued presence of the sacred in Islamic cognitive structures and what modernity represents in terms of reorganizing the relationship between science and religion.
Limits of the claim
This atom should not be taken as a sweeping judgment on all forms of knowledge in Islamic history, nor should it be turned into a denial of the internal diversity of scientific and intellectual experiences. It describes a general tendency in the milieu the text is discussing, not an independent historical detail detached from its context.