Osama bin Laden: Islam After bin Laden

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Rather than experience sadness and frustration, the masses who admired bin Laden's daring revolution would celebrate him and vow to avenge his death. Mobs might well take to the streets, despite the likelihood that national authorities would resort to force to suppress them. Mock funerals and special congregation prayers would no doubt be held in various parts of the Muslim world to herald the departure of another great mujahid in this open-ended war against what some Muslims call the infidels of all types.

The question is whether bin Laden's al-Qaeda would be able to utilize the occasion to revive itself, rally more people behind it and recruit more suicide bombers. Or perhaps we would find that al-Qaeda, as some already suspect, is more of a phenomenon than an organization. In that case, bin Laden's fate as a martyr might still pave the way for more terrorist attacks against Western targets across the world, exactly what the U.S. has been trying to avert. When President Bush announced in September 2001 that he wanted bin Laden captured, "dead or alive," he may have meant to tell the world that it didn't matter to him which way it turned out. He should hope it's the latter.

Tamimi is director of London's Institute of Islamic Political Thought and editor of Islam and Secularism in the Middle East