Sciences and religions in the late modern period

Mohammed Arkoun's scientific project is laid out in a book published in French in 1984 under the title Pour une critique de la raison islamique (Towards a critique of Islamic Reason) in this study and in most of his works, the author distinguishes between two levels at which to approach the “Islamic cultural heritage”: applied Islamology and the methodology of the human sciences. The first level makes it possible to take on board all the intellectual and traditional production with a view to come to grips with “medieval Islam's outlook”, the second level seeks to draw the “Islamic spirit” out of its specific, defined realm by setting texts and practices within a universal socio-historical mindscape. Applied Islamology is a multidisciplinary scientific practice. It is a new science that is different from the classical study of Islam arising from a cold Eurocentrist-Orientalist discourse content with transmitting the writings of ulama into European languages without analyzing them. It is an ambitious and multifaceted project casting a scientific light on the Muslim tradition, including the Quran, the Hadith, biographies of the Prophet of Islam and major commentaries.

One of the salient distinctions Arkoun proposes is between “classical Islamic thought” that is purely religious and “classical thought in Islamic contexts” which is philosophical in connection with the religious but not exclusively. Another distinction helps compare and contrast the “Quranic phenomenon” and the “Islamic phenomenon” or in other words the “Quranic fact” and the Islamic fact”. Arkoun notes that in the early days of the Muslim community, precedence was given to the oral “Quranic word”, supreme and absolute reference since given as the “word of God”. Later on, he says, it was superseded by the written “Islamic word”, arbitrarily manipulated by social and political actors. Historically, two sciences brought that shift about: the "founding principles of Islam" and the “principles of jurisprudence”. Opening the era of interpretations, the founders of the four Sunni schools (Shafii , Hanbali , Maliki and Hanafi) finally established a sort of separation between the Muslims and the Quran. The upshot is, Arkoun writes, that Muslims no longer dare risk a personal interpretation of the Quran, they have no knowledge of the times in which it appeared or what it meant.

On the strength of these analytical data, Arkoun reads the Holy Book with a view to nullify the sacredness of the Quranic text, which he puts down to historical, linguistic and cultural circumstances. He sees the Quranic text as part and parcel of the intellectual heritage and not as a paradoxical, uniquely revealed text. He goes on to say that the symbolic and analogic nature of the Quran opens an eclectic and polysemic horizon. He thinks that the stories told in the Quran make up a kind of narrative framework for the “Islamic conscience” the role of which is to organize and direct human potential according to diverse meanings. As for the time-space component of the “Quranic phenomenon”, Arkoun sides with Al Jabri to contend that the ordering of souras and verses in Uthman's Quran was a contingent classification. It thus becomes necessary to understand better the situations and circumstances of this organization then to set forth a reorganization of verses and suras according to a chronological order whilst taking into account the distinction between the Prophet of Islam's oral discourse and the Quran after its first established standard version.

To that end Arkoun proposes the use of new tools among which the linguistic-semiotic approach, for the fact that it is understood can only mean that the “sacred text” is written in a human, natural tongue. It follows that it is subject to grammatical, rhetorical and semantic norms as well as to the socio-cultural constraints of its environment. The grammatical analysis must thus attend mainly to the formulation of the discourse and the forms it features. But, says Arkoun, that is just the start, its rhetoric and allegoric composition also needs attention as do its semantic structure and its intertextuality, that is its overlapping with other texts deemed sacred. His analysis of the soura “Al-Fatiha” aims to show the fecundity of this approach. In the most common representations, he says, there has grown an unqualified opposition between “those who have brought down wrath” and “those who have received your grace”. Now, if other Quranic meanings are taken into account, as well as the context in which it came about and the wisdom and teaching found in diverse religious rites and cults, another meaning may be perceived, that reflects a dialectic between hope and fear, between faith and atheism, between good and evil. It is that meaning that reaches a person to the core.

Arkoun's intellectual project operates at three levels: the first level is that of a critique of the “Islamic discourse” as well as of the “orientalist discourse”. The second level is the critique of the past and the tradition. The third level is an attempt to read the “Revealed text” in a new global way in order to recapture the “essence” of the moments of reception of the “divine message”.