Formulation of the Claim
Arkoun criticizes traditional readings because they project concepts that were formed after it onto the Qur’an.
Explanation
This claim is understood within Arkoun’s critique of inherited exegesis when it makes the Qur’anic text appear compatible with concepts that were not present in its time. The problem is not reading as such, but transforming the text into something that suits a later conceptual construction, instead of listening to its historical conditions and its original language.
This objection appears as part of Arkoun’s tendency to deconstruct what has become settled as exegetical self-evidence in Islamic reception. He therefore draws attention to the fact that traditional reading does not merely explain; it also reconstructs the text using tools that belong to a stage later than the Qur’an’s revelation.
Its Place in the Book’s Argument
This atom falls within Arkoun’s critique of reading practices that subject the Qur’an to ready-made systems. It is an argument close to his call for the historicity of understanding and for distinguishing between the text in its original context and the concepts that later accumulated around it. From here, this atom is directly connected to the question of the limits of inherited interpretation and the need to interrogate its tools.
Limits of the Claim
This claim does not mean denying every later reading of the Qur’an, nor does it mean that understanding cannot develop. The intended point is narrower than that: it is a warning against attributing later concepts to the text as though they were an original part of it.