The Meaning of the Concept in This Book
Reason in Arkoun’s project is not absent from Islam; rather, it is present as a force that was marginalized or excluded at particular historical moments. Here it appears as a field that needs to be freed from theological and fundamentalist enclosures through historical and methodological critique.
Its Place in the Book’s Argument
In this book, reason is linked to Arkoun’s larger question: how was Islamic thought able to know moments of rationality, and then see critical reason recede in the face of theological and juristic closure? For that reason, the concept is not presented as an abstract definition, but as an element that explains the crises of faith and reason, the limits of tradition, and the reception gap between the Islamic experience and European modernity.
How It Works within the Atlas
Within the atlas, reason functions as a node that brings together the history of Islamic philosophy, criticism of fundamentalism, and the trajectory of modernity. It connects with Ibn Rushd and Ibn Khaldun as two rational moments, and it also connects with the idea that the flourishing of Arab rationalism was the result of historical conditions and epistemic openness. By contrast, the atlas makes clear that material modernization alone is not enough, that intellectual modernity requires modern scientific tools, and that the question of religion and reason has not been settled by modernity itself.
The atlas also links reason to criticism of metaphysics, moral sermonizing, and religious discourse when it approaches mythos, and to the idea that the scholar-thinker turns modern tools into a critical project. Through the comparative history of the monotheistic religions, reason becomes a broader human horizon, not merely a tool within a limited juristic debate.