The Qur'an

Explanation

The Qur’an is the axis of the entire book. It is treated as a divine discourse manifested in human language and requiring historical, linguistic, and critical reading. Its function in the argument is that it is not a closed text, but rather a symbolic and narrative structure and a field for the struggle over interpretations, authority, and meaning.

Referred to by

• Four assumptions governing traditional exegesis
• Arkoun calls for a scientific critical reading
• Arkoun calls for a scientific critical reading of the Qur’an
• Arkoun rejects separating the heart from reason
• Arkoun calls for redefining the marvelous and captivating
• War verbs indicating violence
• The Mother of the Book and the revealed books
• The priority of historical and anthropological study
• Abraham as a new founding construction
• Abraham combines biblical and Arab elements
• Concealing concrete data
• Projecting later concepts onto the text
• Ibn Mujahid’s reform changed the history of the text
• Reconstructing tradition historically and critically reveals the plurality of exegetical methods
• Redefining the concepts of reason and the heart
• Rereading the Qur’an historically
• Denying the historicity of the Qur’an is linked to Hanbalism
• Denying the historicity of the Qur’an is linked to the rigidity of the Hanbali position
• Doctrinal differences in the reports
• The stabilization of Qur’anic discourse
• Religious discourse shares general features
• A Meccan objection to revelation
• Legislative verses highlight the legal dimension in Orientalist reading
• Legislative verses in Orientalist reading
• Legislative verses are not the only criterion for reading
• The signs-symbols refer to transcendent truth
• The legislative verse as an example of the legal character
• The sign is associated with reflection
• Myth as a foundational concept
• Myth and Qur’anic discourse function as positive foundational expression
• Qur’anic Islam is understood as a historical-political phenomenon that reconstructed the community
• Classical Islam is formed through struggles over legitimacy and power
• Islam and politics are studied historically and critically
• Colonialism, national movements, and authoritarian regimes
• The objection treats the separation as a modern projection
• The binary structure of the Qur’anic world
• The narrative structure of the Qur’an
• The Qur’anic structure is dialogical
• Extreme structuralism neglects history
• Structuralism is useful so long as it does not isolate the text from its history
• Traditional and metaphysical interpretation froze the symbolic character of the Qur’an
• Juridical interpretation produces a particular Islam
• Early Islamic history distinguished between stages and did not reduce them
• Religious history is formed by the interweaving of the spiritual and the worldly, not by material causality alone
• Historicity requires a complex reading, not a positivist description
• The prophetic experience founded Islam as a historical-political experience
• Textual criticism raises decisive questions
• Linguistic-semiotic analysis reveals the unthought
• Analysis focuses on linguistic operation
• The social imaginary shapes societies
• Synchrony and historicity are complementary
• Arbitrary fundamentalist exegesis turns the Qur’an into an instrument of violence
• Traditional exegesis produces a material reading of myth and the unseen
• Traditional exegesis obscures the historicity of the Qur’an
• Traditional exegesis obscures the historicity of the Qur’an and turns its symbolism into realism
• Popular and historical exegesis reshaped the story of the People of the Cave
• Ancient exegesis produces a continuous interpretive narrative
• Classical exegesis narrows the field of the possible
• Inherited exegesis freezes meaning
• The distinction between imagining and imagination
• The distinction between the two events
• Distinguishing the oral from the written is a condition for understanding revelation
• The distinction between the oral and the written
• The distinction between the primordial and the historical Qur’an
• Distinguishing original meaning from theological meaning explains semantic transformations
• The distinction between Qur’anic consciousness and later theology
• Lexical frequency shows relative presence
• The first community becomes a recurring paradigm
• Encyclopedic compilation in al-Suyuti
• Combining philology and history
• Contemporary intellectual stagnation
• The need for a Qur’anic typology
• The need for multiple approaches
• Pilgrimage is a rite that reshapes the sacred and the human
• Critical modernity expands the field of thought in confronting fundamentalism and dogmatism
• The Qur’anic event is not the Islamic event
• Archaeological excavation between text and tradition
• Truth and violence
• Islamic discourse deploys the Qur’an politically
• Qur’anic discourse is a dialogical structure requiring pronominal and temporal analysis
• Qur’anic discourse was formulated primarily for action and legislation
• Qur’anic discourse nourished the protest imaginary
• Qur’anic discourse is multidimensional
• Qur’anic discourse is multi-generic
• Qur’anic discourse is distinct from later Islamic discourse
• Qur’anic discourse is a positive mythical model
• Qur’anic and prophetic discourse is powerful because it is suggestive and expansive in meaning
• Qur’anic discourse builds symbolic perception mediated by language and open to transcendent truth
• Qur’anic discourse builds a faith-based rationality through hearing, wonder, and testimony
• Qur’anic discourse is historically formed through constraints and popular and normative interpretations
• Qur’anic discourse differs from Islamic discourse
• Qur’anic discourse derives its efficacy from organizing the community and expanding symbol and meaning
• Qur’anic discourse reorganizes the community and resources and grants believers an ideal status
• Qur’anic discourse aims at action
• Secondary discourses and the transformation of symbols
• Later discourses transformed symbols into normative systems
• The Qur’anic call to reason
• Religion becomes a political force when it oscillates between free thought, ideology, and the state
• Al-Razi and Orientalism as two examples of expanding the tools of exegesis
• Refusal and unbelief sever the connection with Qur’anic discourse
• Refusal severs the connection with Qur’anic discourse
• Eschatological time is higher than worldly time
• Hearing contrasts with direct human knowledge
• The sura as a linguistic exception
• Divine sovereignty and political legitimacy
• The original context of the discourse
• Legitimacy after the Prophet’s death
• The temporal slice is a condition for synchronic study
• Testimony links history to salvation
• Historical conflict in sacred language
• Pronouns perform an organizing function
• The symbolic energy of the Qur’an
• The Qur’anic phenomenon reshaped society, politics, and consciousness
• The Qur’anic phenomenon produces central binaries
• The Qur’anic mythical world
• Marvels are called signs
• Wonder is understood as a sign calling for reflection
• The astonishing marvelous as a field for the manifestation of the divine
• The marvelous is a basic element in religious consciousness
• Religious solidarity in place of familial solidarity
• Doctrines later become certainties
• Qur’anic reason is not Aristotelian
• Reason among the Mu’tazilites is the totality of knowledge
• Violence in the Qur’an is understood within a broader scriptural discourse
• Violence in a broader discourse
• Al-Fatiha reveals the interaction of Qur’anic discourse and its transformation into a corpus
• Al-Fatiha as an entryway into the total text
• The first civil strife embodies the struggle over Qur’anic legitimacy
• Orthodox thought strips revelation of historicity
• Traditional Islamic thought and the Orientalist approach are both limited
• The Qur’an reshaped the position of the individual
• The Qur’an between Muhammad’s horizon and later historical formation
• The Qur’an is a founding event with its own symbolic energy
• The Qur’an is an integrated divine discourse that cannot be fragmented
• The Qur’an is a founding symbolic discourse whose reception changes and is subjected to restriction and deployment
• The Qur’an is an organized narrative discourse with multiple systems and another meaning
• The Qur’an within symbolic knowledge
• The Qur’an in a competitive polemical context
• The Qur’an as the word of God and a historical document
• The Qur’an as a field of comparative scientific research
• The Qur’an as a closed and open corpus
• The Qur’an is an open corpus within a closed structure
• The Qur’an is a heard text before it is read visually
• The Qur’an is a heard text before it is a read one
• The Qur’an and meaning are open to revision
• The Qur’an is an integrated unity
• The Qur’an establishes a symbolic perception that opens the field of the marvelous to the manifestation of the divine
• The Qur’an founds religious consciousness within changing fields of knowledge
• The Qur’an founds a new community and meaning through symbolic and imaginative energy
• The Qur’an establishes a special relation to perception
• The Qur’an builds communal identity through rituals and a reversal of group solidarity
• The Qur’an arouses guilt
• The Qur’an needs an epistemic framework
• The Qur’an needs a critical historical reading
• The Qur’an needs a contemporary reading
• The Qur’an contains seeds of wonder and rationality
• The Qur’an links truth to power and violence and places the sacred at the heart of conflict
• The Qur’an links society to revelation
• The Qur’an reconstructs pilgrimage within the horizon of monotheism and the new sacred
• The Qur’an reshapes society and signification through imagining and metaphor
• The Qur’an reorganizes the community and resources
• The Qur’an reformulates pilgrimage as a sacred space of equality
• The Qur’an presents itself as the word of God
• The Qur’an belongs to symbolic knowledge that produces an effective mythical world
• The Qur’an is understood through psychological and social structures and a history of protest
• The Qur’an is understood in the context of historical polemic and religious competition
• The Qur’an is read by a modern method that rejects traditional restriction
• The Qur’an is read as a nonlinear symbolic structure moving among overlapping circles
• The Qur’an is read historically and linguistically in its original moment
• The Qur’an is read as a historical unity with multiple interpretations
• Projective readings do harm to the Qur’an
• The linguistic and historical reading
• The modern historical reading
• Historical reading separates the fixed text from the moments of its reception
• Historical reading prevents projecting present standards and reveals contemporary stagnation
• Historical reading distinguishes between early political function and later religious meaning
• Historical reading and juridical reading
• Traditional and orthodox reading
• Synchronic reading against projection
• Traditional reading projects later concepts onto the Qur’an
• Modern reading reveals the Qur’an’s operation within contested social and symbolic structures
• Literal reading is insufficient for understanding the Qur’an
• Official reading entrenched literalism
• Juridical reading turns religious language into legislation and produces a particular interpretation
• Juridical reading codifies religious language
• Qur’anic reading needs a multi-framed historical and linguistic method
• Qur’anic reading needs a critique of philology and reductionism
• The Qur’anic reading of pilgrimage reveals historical and theological assumptions
• A contemporary reading of the Qur’an requires moving beyond traditional exegesis
• The comparative and structural reading of the Qur’an
• Critical reading dismantles orthodoxy and reconstructs the meaning of the Qur’an
• Critical reading resists orthodox rigidity and reopens questions
• Qur’anic stories are a representational structure
• Qur’anic stories need structural analysis
• Qur’anic stories need historical critique
• Qur’anic stories are understood as a representational structure and need a double critique
• The heart in the Qur’an is a center of knowledge open to the marvelous
• The heart is the center of psychological states among the Mu’tazilites
• The heart is an open center of knowledge
• The heart is the central organ of perception
• The heart and the marvelous determine the mode of Qur’anic perception
• Heart, reason, and hearing are integrated in understanding revelation
• The Book was linked to power and knowledge
• Sacred scripture becomes sacralized historically
• The Book completes an earlier Qur’anic project
• Symbol-words in the Qur’an
• The Qur’anic universe is a sacred spacetime
• The unthought expands because methods are insufficient
• God is the dominant semantic agent
• God and the Qur’an are understood through the historicity of concept and event
• Believers attain an ideal status
• Directness prevails over living metaphor
• The supreme speaker dominates the discourse
• Qur’anic metaphor changes signification
• Metaphor is a central element in Qur’anic discourse
• Metaphor and nonliteral reading are conditions for understanding the Qur’an
• The three fields of knowledge
• The closed official corpus
• The official corpus and oral genesis
• Later theological meanings
• Modern knowledge stalls when the intellectual weakens and schooling and politicization dominate
• Religious knowledge operates within interwoven symbolic and value systems
• Affective knowledge is the basis of religious consciousness
• The final meaning in exegesis
• The original meaning of Qur’anic words
• The usual meaning does not suit the Qur’an
• The historical fallacy in interpretation
• The Orientalist approach brings the Qur’an down into history
• The scientific approach to the Qur’an
• Qur’anic aims are not juridical aims
• The thinkable in the Qur’an
• The critical historical method
• The critical historical method reveals the limits of philological reading
• Abrogating and abrogated verses as evidence of revision
• The Qur’anic text between the stability of the corpus and the openness of signification
• The Qur’anic text remains open to multiple determinations
• The Muhammadan founding model
• The Qur’anic model endures thanks to its symbolic capacity
• Qur’anic unity in Islamic consciousness
• Revelation in Surat al-Tawba confronts violence and organizes the community
• Revelation is a Qur’an human in language but bearing superhuman layers
• Revelation guides the human being
• Islamic consciousness needs a reading that combines history, imagination, and rationalization
• Shi’i walaya presents a spiritual continuation of prophecy within the Qur’an
• The victory of the Hanbali-Ash’ari current
• The split between believers and unbelievers
• The division of addressees in Qur’anic discourse
• A program for reading Surat al-Kahf
• A critical program for understanding the Qur’an
• Founding a new sacred space
• The history of interpretation reveals the expansion of pilgrimage’s meanings and then their juridical narrowing
• Arkoun’s reading of the Qur’an is founded on the centrality of Islam as a decisive object
• Moving beyond inherited exegeses
• Renewing religious thought requires moving beyond the closure of tradition and regulating the function of the unseen
• Renewing the reading of the Qur’an needs historical, linguistic, and critical tools
• Renewing the reading of the Qur’an requires dismantling traditional exegesis and expanding the tools of independent reasoning
• Renewing the reading of the Qur’an requires dismantling inherited methods and expanding the tools of critique
• Modernizing the Qur’anic project
• Liberating religious reason passes through acknowledging the historicity of tradition and moving beyond closed sacrality
• Analyzing sacralization and desacralization
• Analysis of Qur’anic discourse reveals the formation of the community and the transfer of authority through human mediation
• Analysis of the network of pronouns
• Diverting the Qur’anic text into realism
• Transforming pagan pilgrimage into Islamic pilgrimage
• Transforming facts into eternal symbols
• Transforming daily facts into models
• The official recording of Qur’anic utterances
• The politicization of contemporary Islam
• The faltering of the rule-of-law state and civil society
• The plurality of Qur’anic readings
• The multiplicity of the meaning of the Qur’anic text
• The disparity between consumption and critical study
• Interpreting the Qur’an in its original moment
• Distinguishing power and legitimacy
• The expansion of religious populism in Europe
• Deploying the Qur’an in political manipulation
• Deploying the Qur’an leads to political manipulation
• Deploying the text in political violence
• Three stages for reading the Qur’an
• The binary of unbelievers and believers
• The political binary of believer and unbeliever
• The limits of classical Orientalism
• Semantic movement within the Qur’anic world
• The specificity of religious language
• Confusing urban and popular Islam
• Studying the Qur’an requires integrating philology and history and identifying temporal slices
• A call for modern methods for the Qur’an
• The meanings of the word wonder
• The religion of Abraham establishes a new monotheistic code
• The religion of Abraham launches a third monotheistic code
• Rejecting confinement to traditional exegeses
• Rejecting a definitive choice between historicity and non-historicity
• Rejecting a simple linear reading
• The four symbolics of the Qur’an
• The symbolism of Qur’anic discourse
• Surat al-Tawba and cosmic polemic
• Surat al-Kahf as an example of historical reading
• Surat Yusuf and Muhammad’s experience
• The validity and efficacy of Qur’anic language
• The Constitution of Medina and the view of traditional exegesis
• The difficulty of reading the modern Qur’an
• The difficulty of reading the Qur’anic wording
• The necessity of studying Muhammad’s conception and his time
• The ambiguity of the text and the work of commentaries
• The absence of contemporary Islamic thought
• The absence of the nominal term reason
• The absence of the term violence from the Qur’an
• The efficacy of the Qur’anic model
• The loss of the first oral connection
• Understanding Islam requires historical and linguistic analysis that reveals the formation of power, meaning, and guardianship
• Understanding Qur’anic discourse requires analyzing pronouns and the exceptions of the suras
• Understanding Qur’anic discourse requires preserving its plurality before reducing it to legislation
• Understanding the Qur’an requires historical and linguistic interpretation that distinguishes it from later projections
• Understanding the Qur’an requires placing it within the history of religious conflict and the construction of authority
• Understanding the Qur’an requires dismantling inherited exegeses and adopting modern scientific reading
• Understanding the Qur’an requires taking metaphor seriously
• Understanding the Qur’an requires historical critique that frees revelation from the projections of later reading
• In the Qur’an are seeds of rationality and wonderment
• In the Qur’an there is a rationality linked to wonder, not to philosophical reason
• The revisability of meaning
• Reading the Qur’an is renewed when revelation is understood as a historical symbolic discourse that frees meaning and religion from orthodoxy and politicization
• Reading the Qur’an requires a critical historicity of event, meaning, and origins
• Reading the Qur’an requires freeing its symbolism from traditional freezing
• Reading the Qur’an requires a historical-linguistic method that reveals transformations of signification
• Reading the Qur’an belongs within a critical project for renewing religious thought
• Reading revelation requires combining linguistic origin, history, and anthropology
• A historical reading of the Qur’an
• The power of Qur’anic and prophetic discourse
• The centrality of the problem of divine validity
• The responsibility of Muslim mediators
• A distance between the Qur’an and later jurisprudence
• The legitimacy of the human sciences in relation to tradition
• Ibn Rushd’s miracle is philosophical
• The vocabulary of place and time as spiritual symbols
• The concept of the marvelous and captivating needs redefinition to suit the Qur’an
• Comparing translations reveals non-equivalence
• The aims of the Qur’an are not the later juridical aims
• The threefold method of reading
• The emergence of Islam and its confrontation with modernity are read through struggles over legitimacy and mobilization
• Critique of projecting present-day standards
• Critique of contemporary projection
• Critiquing religion and Orientalism requires a sociohistorical method without prejudgments
• Critiquing modern legitimacy requires moving beyond sufficiency with sharia without abolishing the need for meaning
• Critiquing Qur’anic violence requires dismantling fundamentalist interpretation and placing the discourse in its scriptural context
• Critique of Qur’anic philology
• Critique of the fundamentalist reading of the Qur’an
• Critique of the ideologized reading of Islam
• Critique of generalizing analogy to the Qur’an
• The paradigmatic character of Qur’anic stories
• The dominance of the Islamic symbol
• The dominance of the authorized reading
• The unity of Qur’anic discourse is manifested in the integration of stories and legislation within divine speech