This path brings together tradition, its history, and the conditions of its reading in Arkoun’s work, where tradition does not appear as a fixed block, but as a historical formation shaped by writing, selection, authority, and interpretation. From this perspective, reading itself becomes part of the subject, because understanding tradition passes through knowing what shaped its canon, what fixed its meanings, and what obscured some of its aspects.
This path appears clearly in Critique and Ijtihad in Islamic Thought, where critique is linked to renewing the tools of understanding, and where returning to tradition becomes a return to the history of its formation rather than to any ready-made meaning within it. It also appears in The Human Formation of Islam, where tradition is tied to language, memory, the imaginary, and authority, and then is further confirmed in When Islam Awakens, when reading enters into a direct relationship with the present, and with questions of censorship, interpretation, and secularization within the religious domain.