Sectarianism

It's just that one is saying, "You're falling short," and it's, you know, "You're, you're reverting back to this, this old type of deviance." And the Quran itself testifies at various points to Muhammad and his opponents being the same people, and the things they argue over, as say, angels being a classic one, but also, like, the day of judgment and whether resurrection is a bodily resurrection or not.

These are really classic things from the, what John Wansbrough called the sectarian milieu, this environment for sort of renegades around the Roman Levant.

And I think that that's the other problem is that the Mecca, the story of Mecca is, is itself part of the tradition.

I mean, it's, it's meant to make the foundations of Islam miraculous 'cause it, it would be miraculous if somebody a thousand miles from the Roman frontier comes up with a biblical theology this sophisticated.

I think that's right.

I think you can...

Uh, as I say, it's the, it's why one's res- phrase of the sectarian milieu sticks because it, it just, it, it nicely encapsulates this pro- this, this area, right, which is basically what we would now, it's the sort of Syria, Palestine, Jordan, and actually in bits of Iraq as well, where you had these, these Arab kingdoms that were basically acting as the buffer zones and the, the frontier guards for both the Persians and the, the Romans.

The, it makes more sense for it to emerge in that zone, and you can see in that zone that that's where the kind of the renegades from Orthodoxy, both Jewish and Christian, ended up.

What's that?

Sectarianism.

Yeah, when you take that...

When I was a kid growing up in the 80s, you would watch the TV and you would see the IRA bombing and fighting off the British Army up in Northern Ireland.