Formulation of the claim
Arkoun rejects a random fundamentalist interpretation of the Qur’an because it ignores interpretive and critical inquiry.
Explanation
In this claim, Arkoun objects to a mode of reading that confines itself to fixing meaning from within a closed fundamentalist horizon, without passing through the tools of historical and interpretive understanding. Randomness here is not merely a lack of order; it is also a relinquishing of the critical distance that makes interpretation accountable to scrutiny.
What is meant by this critique appears in the fact that interpretation, when detached from interpretive inquiry, becomes a reproduction of preexisting meaning rather than an uncovering of its layers and problems. For that reason, Arkoun’s objection is linked to the need to open the text to a reading that examines the conditions of understanding and does not merely claim an already fixed meaning.
Its place in the book’s argument
This atom belongs within Arkoun’s critique of forms that confine the Qur’anic text within a fundamentalist reading satisfied with certainty and excluding the tools of analysis. It is close to his broader theses about the need to move beyond closed reading toward a wider historical and critical examination of tradition and meaning.
Limits of the claim
This atom should not be loaded with more than its immediate scope: it does not offer a detailed program for interpretation, nor does it distinguish here between schools or methods; it simply identifies the locus of the problem in random fundamentalist reading.