Greater Persia

How often does one read, in the Middle Eastern press, of those fanatical religious Jews with their dreams of a Greater Israel, always described as extending “from the Nile to the Euphrates.” It’s a ridiculous charge; the most that the most “right-wing” of Jews would like is simply for the territory — re-named the “West Bank” by the Jordanians when they seized it in the 1948-49 war — that Israel came into possession of, by force of arms, in the Six-Day War, that goes up to the River Jordan — to be incorporated, as it should be for quite other than religious reasons as well, into the State of Israel. That ‘Greater Israel,” that mighty empire, would still have a land area 1/1,000th of that which the Arabs possess.

There is another people in the Middle East,  the borders of whose ancient empire is extensive. You might look at this, and give it some thought. And the Empire of the Arabs, Greater Arabia? What are its dimensions? Oh, Greater Arabia now includes 22 states, and goes all the way from the Atlantic (Morocco) to the Gulf. And if Islam is the gift of the Arabs, and non-Arab Musllims feel compelled to adopt Arab names, Arab dress, Arab customs of the 7th century, Arab everything, then perhaps one could say that the Arab Empire is coterminous with all the lands of Islam, whose peoples. to the extent that they are deeply Muslim,  dearly wish they could be Arabs.