Formulation of the claim
Islamic theology rejects linear deterministic causality.
Explanation
Arkoun presents this position as a rejection of the philosophical view that makes events unfold according to fixed necessary causes. The point is not to deny every relationship between causes and effects, but to object to turning this relationship into a closed deterministic law.
This means that theological discourse reinterprets causality within a religious horizon different from the philosophical one. In this horizon, events are not understood as the product of a mechanical chain, but within a conception that gives divine agency a decisive place in explaining the world.
Its place in the book’s argument
This atom falls within Arkoun’s critique of the ways Islamic theology has formulated its relationship to philosophy, especially when it opposes rational conceptions that seek strict causal order. It illuminates one aspect of the tension between theological thought and philosophical explanation within the history of Islamic thought as presented by Arkoun.
Limits of the claim
This atom should not be taken to mean that Arkoun endorses theological causality as a final explanation of the world, nor that it summarizes a single definitive position for the entire Islamic heritage. What is meant here is the description of a specific tendency in theological debate as presented in the text.