Dante’s Muhammad was a schismatic Christian subplot, not an infidel outsider

Evidence

The ditch contained more than a hundred sinners, and apart from Muhammad and Ali they all appear to have been not Muslims (or Jews or pagans) but bad Christians. Muhammad and Ali are represented here as schismatics, not infidels, and certainly not as outsiders to European civilization. — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 107

Categorization

• CANDY: Dante put Muhammad in the circle for schismatics among mostly bad Christians — a light re-framing of a famous image.
• XREF: connects to: Dante judged belief against heresy, never Occident against Orient — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 776; Dante’s Hell punished heresy and rationalism severer than Muslim identity — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 773