Formulation of the Claim
Arkoun links the legitimacy of violence in the Qur’an to a broader discourse that includes the Torah and the Gospel.
Explanation
This statement does not isolate the Qur’an from a wider religious horizon; rather, it places it within a discursive system in which monotheistic texts share in the representation of violence and the legitimacy attached to it. The aim of this connection is not to exonerate or condemn a text, but to shift the discussion from isolated reading to historical comparison between discourses.
This linkage is consistent with Arkoun’s method of dismantling conceptions that confine religious phenomena within a single text or a single tradition. Violence here is read as an element that appears within a broader religious discourse, not as an isolated feature attributed to the Qur’an alone.
Its Place in the Book’s Argument
This atom falls within Arkoun’s effort to expand the field of comparative reading and to relate the issues raised about Islam to their counterparts in the Jewish and Christian traditions. It supports the book’s theses that reject a fragmentary reading of monotheistic texts and call for an examination of the formation of meanings within a long history of religious discourse.
Limits of the Claim
This claim does not mean a simple equation between the texts, nor does it erase the historical and doctrinal differences among them. Nor does speaking of a “broader discourse” turn into a final judgment on religion or on the Qur’anic text alone.