Muhammad Arkoun and critique of religious reason

The problem of rationality is always one of challenging issues among different Islamic and even non-Islamic theological and philosophical schools. Different environment and conditions prevailing over each school of thought and resulting in deferent readings and interpretations, involved some people in excess and some other in deficit. Choosing the side of excess, Muhammad Arkoun elevated the dignity of reason to the extent of absolute sovereignty over human’s life and regarded the inattention to it as one of the main reasons of the decadence of the Muslims. He takes advantage of two methods of critique and comparative to perform his scientific mission in the critique of Islamic reason. According to him, the defaults of religious reason like trans-historicity, having mythic role, inconsistence with the faith, fanaticism, dogmatism and etc. caused Muslim’s decadence and backwardness. His understanding of religious reason in the frame of the dominant reason in the Islamic word and his inattention to the characteristics, merits and functions of the rationality of the original Islam ended in his mistake in critique of religious reason.