Formulating the claim
Internal religious experience is deeper than the external mass and ritual manifestations, because it is connected to the existential structure of religiosity, not only to its public representations.
Explanation
Arkoun distinguishes between what a person lives in the depth of religious experience and what appears from it in the collective sphere as rites, practices, and circulating formulas. The point is not to deny the value of outward manifestations, but to indicate that religion cannot be reduced to them, and that its semantic and ontological inner dimension is broader than the forms of outward representation.
The importance of this distinction lies in the fact that it opens the way to a deeper level of religiosity, where the relationship to meaning and existence is formed before it takes shape in public forms. From this angle, manifestations become a sign of experience, not a substitute for it.
Its place in the book’s argument
This atom falls within Arkoun’s effort to deconstruct the reduction of religion to external expression or to collective practice alone. It converges with his broader thesis, which distinguishes between levels of religious discourse and calls for attention to what is hidden behind dominant representations, institutions, and rituals.
Limits of the claim
This claim does not mean that religious manifestations are without value or that the collective dimension is unimportant; rather, it places them at a lower rank in terms of revealing the depth of experience. Nor should it be taken as a final judgment on all forms of religiosity or as a reduction of any specific religious context.