In the wake of the Arab spring uprisings, sectarian narratives have also proved a useful tool for Gulf monarchies leading the counter-revolution – characterising protesters as foreign-inspired or at least not representative of the Sunni mainstream.
Although it is extraordinarily difficult at a time when Iraqis are under attack, the Iraqi government needs to resist the sectarian Isis narrative and to recognise that Isis is distinct from Iraq's Sunni community.
Funders have gravitated toward extremist by pinning a sectarian or absolutist narrative to their recipient brigades.
"Much has been written," he says, "about the collusion of church and state to bring about an Irish society that was childish, repressive and sectarian, and this narrative hardly suggests otherwise.
One problem the Saudi regime now faces is that the sectarian and anti-Iranian narrative on which it relies has been undermined by the international nuclear deal struck with Iran last year.
For the most part, Yemenis are resistant to a narrative of sectarian divisions.
That dispelled conventional narratives about sectarian voting, and showed that Nigerians, not just northerners, were ready for new direction.A peaceful handover will be transformative for Nigeria.
Its narrative is consistently sectarian and provocative, as was that of its precursor, al-Qaeda in Iraq, when sectarian bloodletting between Sunnis and Shia was at its height in 2005-6.
The book is set in Glasgow and follows the fissures of an age-old sectarian divide in two intertwined narratives, set now and 20 years ago.
