The aim of this article is to highlight the contribution of Mohammed Arkoun on sacred violence in Islam and more specifically on the notion of “holy/just war”. This warlike theology was developed by jurists-theologians in the first three centuries of the Hegira (7th-9th century) from sura 9 (at-Tawba, Repentance), which is still mobilized today by Islamist terrorists worldwide. After outlining the meaning of Arkoun’s “anthropological triangle”, i.e. violence, sacred, truth, the article questions, from this perspective, sura 9 in order to determine whether Arkoun’s proposal sheds light (or not) on the socio-historical-anthropological bedrocks of sura 9’s content.