Formulation of the Claim
Arkoun warns that projecting contemporary concepts and positions onto the Qur’anic text leads to an ideological inflation in interpretation.
Explanation
What this critique means is that the present is made into a direct standard for reading the ancient text, so that a meaning imposed by the reader from outside its historical and epistemic horizon comes to dominate it. At that point, the text is no longer an object of understanding; instead, it becomes a field onto which later conceptions are projected, reshaping its meaning.
This objection appears in Arkoun’s project as part of his rejection of readings that import into the text concepts and positions that were not part of its original moment. The problem is not the reader’s contemporary presence, but rather the transformation of that presence into an authority that swallows the text’s meaning and confines it within ideological use.
Its Place in the Book’s Argument
This atom falls within Arkoun’s critique of modes of reading that treat the Qur’an as a space for confirming later positions, rather than questioning it within its historical and epistemic horizon. It supports his broader thesis about the need to distinguish between the text, its history, and the readings that have accumulated around it.
Limits of the Claim
This formulation does not mean rejecting every contemporary reading of the text, nor does it deny the possibility of benefiting from the questions of the present, so long as the reading does not turn the text into nothing more than a mirror for them.