The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran Quotes

“One can be deeply influenced by people to whom one is utterly hostile”
― Patricia Crone, The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran: Rural Revolt and Local Zoroastrianism

“Reincarnation offers a better justification of evil than anything monotheism can offer, but it does so by blaming the victim and sanctifying the status quo.”
― Patricia Crone, The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran: Rural Revolt and Local Zoroastrianism

“We also have to bear in mind that our own sense of what is plausible and implausible is severely limited by the fact that the modern world is dominated by an extremely narrow range of family arrangements. Looking in anthropology books on kinship and marriage is like opening a book on a huge variety of dead and dying languages, all victims of the inexorable homogenisation of the world that has been in progress since the dawn of civilisation.”
― Patricia Crone, The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran: Rural Revolt and Local Zoroastrianism

“It is probably safe to say that in strongly hierarchical societies the only people to whom something approaching nationalist sentiments can be attributed in pre-modern times is the ruling elite, and then only at times.”
― Patricia Crone, The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran: Rural Revolt and Local Zoroastrianism

“The fact that the doctrine makes perfect sense even though Epiphanius keeps finding it incoherent suggests that he is giving a faithful account of it.”
― Patricia Crone, The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran: Rural Revolt and Local Zoroastrianism