The Book, deconstruction, and the religious sign

Abstract

In this article, I investigate a possibility in the structure of the Qur’an for rethinking the usually forgotten issue of the religious sign. This is where deconstruction, guided by a certain otherness or transcendence, renders all God’s attributes as unthinkable. Thus, God’s presence is not the opposite of absence and his will is not in the way of our freedom. In fact, God is the Other, not in a dual system. Such an otherness brings about the idea of a sign which is non-dual in nature: It presents Allah as the Other who is never outside the Book.1 In addition, He is so near, yet no thing in the Book is like Him.