For a Critique of Islamic Reason

Introduction

Mohammed Arkoun, a scholar of Algerian Kabyle origin who taught at the Sorbonne, published this collection of studies in Paris in 1984. He calls for an “applied Islamology” that examines Islamic thought with the methods of history, linguistics, semiotics and anthropology rather than those of traditional theology or classical Orientalism. His central distinction is between the thinkable, the unthinkable and the unthought: orthodoxy, he argues, fixed what could be thought and excluded whole fields of questions, such as the historical formation of the Qur’anic text. The aim is not to dissolve Islam but to open religious thought to critical reflection.

Connections

Builds on

• The Order of Things1966 · Michel Foucault