the Qur'an

Explanation

In this source, the Qur’an is treated as a linguistic and historical discourse with multiple lives, not as a closed text stripped of context. Its importance lies in the fact that it is the center of Arkoun’s reading: it is understood through its lexicon, its historical context, its symbolic structure, and its relationship to ritual and recitation.

Cited by

• Arkoun’s critical tools
• Most interpretations fall into a historical fallacy
• One Thousand and One Nights as a model of enchanting marvel
• Women’s reform runs up against tradition
• The Qur’an’s humanism and its human character
• The Qur’anic episteme as a network of significations
• The historical episteme
• The episteme directs manifest systems of ideas
• Qur’anic Islam is spiritual submission, but its historical meaning shifted toward a combative identity
• Qur’anic Islam is submission to God
• Islam was historically and humanly formed and can only be understood through an epistemological critique that opens religion to spirit, modernity, and universality
• The interpretive rupture is far-reaching
• Islamic history moved from creative plurality to sectarian and epistemic closure
• Qur’anic exegesis flourished and then declined into repetition
• Qur’anic exegesis declined after the thirteenth century
• Qur’anic exegesis was once creative
• The distinction between science and the sciences
• Qur’anic narratives are symbolic tales
• Qur’anic discourse is analyzed linguistically and semiotically
• Religion takes shape symbolically through memory, time, mythologization, and meaning
• Direct recourse to the Qur’an is practically diminishing
• The sura announces a new law
• Lexical Arabic has become detached from contemporary usage
• Reason and the Qur’an acquire their meanings through context, not abstraction
• Knowledge in the Qur’an is revelatory knowledge
• The sciences and reason are linked to a later development
• Al-Ghazali adheres to Qur’anic knowledge
• Jurisprudence and power reshape religion within a struggle over legitimacy
• The Qur’an and revelation are read within language, context, and historical conflict
• The Qur’an establishes a new religious solidarity
• The Qur’an carries a political dimension
• The Qur’an carries a political dimension
• The Qur’an is lived ritually through recitation
• The Qur’an is read historically and linguistically
• Qur’anic stories possess semantic coherence
• Qur’anic stories possess semantic coherence
• Universality is an open project
• The historical lexicon for understanding the Qur’an
• The Arkounian method deconstructs the episteme and goes beyond superficial description
• The critical historical method is not sufficient
• The transformation of Jesus’s words into text
• The meaning of Islam transformed historically
• Al-Shafi’i’s ordering of the sources of legal inference
• The concept of God was formed historically
• The multiplicity of actors in the Qur’an
• Deconstructing Qur’anic reason
• Expanding interpersonal relations
• The Qur’an’s appeal becomes apparent in recitation
• The Qur’an’s multiple lives
• Studying the Qur’an and the early Islamic sciences requires a historical episteme
• Reading the Qur’an requires its historical context
• Reading the Qur’an requires an anthropological approach
• Reading the Qur’an historically and linguistically
• Arkoun’s project reveals Islam’s humanity through a double, non-dismissive critique
• The concept of God is historically formed
• Arkoun’s critique of tradition does not negate the Qur’an and is inseparable from explaining the emergence of Islam
• Critique of inherited traditional exegesis
• Critique of Islamic reason distinguishes between religious history and religion itself
• Maliki dominance closes off ijtihad