Dennis Prager interviewed conservative author and Arabist David Pryce Jones (The Closed Circle) today.
Dennis: “Has there been silence from the Arab and Muslim world in reaction to Bin Laden’s death?”
David: “Yes. The Arab world seems to be silent and muted on the question. They are extremely disappointed.
“They feel that a champion of the jihad cause is gone and he is irreplaceable and they are downbeat. The official spokesmen will say that this is the right thing but the people on the street feel that this was a man who stood up to the United States and had a great future. He was presenting to the Arabs a joint united Arab-Muslim effort, a caliphate.”
Dennis: “This is exactly what I believe.”
“What does that do to the claim that Bin Laden is a perverter of Islam and represents only a tiny sliver of the Arab and Muslim worlds?”
David: “He made them feel that it is possible to go back to a pan-Islamic identity. They can’t go back. The world is too modern, moves too fast. He misled. I’m sure he believed that it was possible to unite all the Arabs and put the Christians and Jews in their place — underneath. He represented a fantasy. I’d like to believe that his death represents an end to this fantasy and that we’ll all grow up now.”
“Bin Laden was a would-be dictator and when the dictator is gone, it is hard to keep people together.”
David and Dennis are not optimistic about Egypt.
Dennis: “We’ve been told since 9/11 that Bin Laden represents virtually nobody in the Arab-Islamic world. So wouldn’t you think the Islamic world would say thank God? That somebody who was such a distorter of Islam has met his day of judgment. And we’re not hearing that. That’s very upsetting.”
“If Bin Laden was a perversion of Islam, then why aren’t Islamic societies celebrating the greatest living perverter of their religion? No non-Muslim has done 1/1000th the damage to Islam that Bin Laden did. You’d think every sheikh, every imam, every madrassah would say Allahu Akbar, our perverter is dead.”
