Formulation of the Claim
Arkoun holds that the Qur’anic text can be understood as a proclamatory narrative structure centered on an agent, an object, and a message.
Explanation
Arkoun does not read the Qur’an as scattered passages, but as a text with an internal order that links the elements of story, discourse, and guidance. In this sense, attending to narrative structure becomes a way to understand how the text operates as a coherent whole.
This perspective makes it possible to show that the text is not presented merely as a set of rulings or separate statements, but as a formulation addressed to its recipients within a movement of proclamation and communication. Thus, the narrative structure here is not a formal description, but an entry point into understanding the function of Qur’anic discourse from within.
Its Place in the Book’s Argument
This atom comes within Arkoun’s attempt to reread the Qur’an as an object of critical analysis, not merely as a text received as a final given. It converges with his broader thesis in Readings of the Qur’an, where he works to bring out the text’s historical, discursive, and organizational dimensions.
This idea is also connected to Arkoun’s effort to move reflection on the Qur’an from the level of automatic sacralization or fragmentary reading to the level of structural understanding. It therefore functions within the book as one of the keys that allow the relation between the text, its message, and its structure to be understood at once.
Limits of the Claim
This claim does not mean reducing the Qur’an to a literary tale or denying its religious character. Nor does it offer a final judgment on all levels of the text; rather, it defines an angle of reading that focuses on its narrative order and its proclamatory function.