Formulating the claim
The text highlights that popular storytellers, together with popular culture, contributed to the spread of religious beliefs and knowledge, and that this popular presence was part of the formation of Islamic sensibility.
Explanation
The matter is not limited to the transmission of some religious knowledge; rather, it points to an intermediary role played by popular forms in consolidating widely circulated religious representations within the social sphere.
Its place in the book’s argument
This idea comes within the references that trace the formation of religious consciousness in the public sphere, and it shows how forms of popular expression intertwine with the making of a collective religious sensibility.
What the claim does not say
The claim does not spell out the mechanisms of this influence or define its precise limits, nor does it independently explain the difference between spreading beliefs and spreading knowledge, or the effect of each on Islamic sensibility.