Formulation of the Claim
Arkoun holds that the Hanbali-Ash’ari current historically triumphed over the Mu’tazilites and the philosophers.
Explanation
Within Arkoun’s reading, this victory is understood as a decisive transformation in the history of Islamic thought. The matter did not remain a limited doctrinal dispute; rather, it became the privileging of a theological and juridical system at the expense of other rational tendencies. The claim is therefore linked to a shift in the balance of power within religious culture.
The effect of this transformation appears in the rise of a more disciplined religious formulation within the limits of transmission and tradition, as opposed to the retreat of the spaces that Mu’tazilism and philosophy had made available for rational inquiry. Thus the claim appears here not merely as a historical description, but as a sign of a broader trajectory in the formation of religious consciousness.
Its Place in the Book’s Argument
This atom belongs to Arkoun’s argument, which reads the history of Islamic thought as a series of victories and defeats among multiple modes of thinking. It is directly connected to his critique of dogmatism and to his attempt to explain the shrinking presence of free philosophical and theological reason in the Islamic sphere.
Limits of the Claim
This atom should not be made to bear a final judgment on the whole of Islamic tradition, nor should the entire intellectual history be reduced to a single binary. It points to the predominance of a particular current at an influential historical moment, not to the disappearance of all other forms of thinking or their complete cessation.