Formulation of the Claim
Classical and orthodox Islamic thought strips the time of revelation and the process of collecting the text of historicity.
Explanation
This claim means, within Arkoun’s horizon, that the orthodox reading presents revelation as a completed, transcendent event and separates it from its historical conditions. In this way, the dimensions of the text’s human formation, and the selection, ordering, and formulation that accompanied it, are concealed.
This position also entails transforming the foundational narrative into a closed ideal image, one that does not allow consideration of the historical process that entered into the text. Here, history is not treated as part of understanding, but as an element excluded from consideration.
Its Place in the Book’s Argument
This atom falls within Arkoun’s critique of the way religious knowledge is formed when it is presented in a final form purified of history. It approaches his theses that distinguish between the founding event and the later reading of it, and reveals how orthodoxy became a framework that fixes meaning rather than opening a path for questioning it.
Limits of the Claim
This claim does not mean denying the religious value of revelation or reducing the experience of faith to a merely human construction. Nor does it describe all forms of religiosity; rather, it concerns a pattern of classical and orthodox understanding as Arkoun treats it.