Formulation of the Claim
The addressees in Qur’anic discourse are divided into supporters and opponents.
Explanation
Mohammed Arkoun places this division within the structure of Qur’anic discourse itself, not as an incidental detail, but as a sign of the differentiation of positions of reception within the text. The addressee here is not a single bloc, but parties whose stances toward the Qur’anic call and whose responses to it differ.
This division is consistent with the reading that links meaning to the way discourse is formed and to the distribution of its voices and relations. Thus, for Arkoun, understanding the text passes through attention to this tension between acceptance and rejection within the addressed field.
Its Place in the Book’s Argument
This atom falls within Arkoun’s effort to read the Qur’an structurally, showing how discourse is formed through internal relations between call and response, and between the supportive position and the oppositional position. It is close to the book’s theses that address the semantic structure of the text and how meaning is produced within the history of reception, not in an abstract formulation detached from the addressees.
Limits of the Claim
This atom should not be made to bear more than it says: it establishes the existence of a division among the addressees, but it does not here provide a detailed historical classification of the groups or an exact enumeration of them. Nor does it reduce the whole of Qur’anic discourse to this opposition alone.