my point ... was that the construction may have been ... strained in an article such as this.
As I am not so self-assured as Lawrence Wright, I have consulted the American Heritage Dictionary which includes these definitions of "diaspora":
diaspora
A dispersion of a people from their original homeland. The community formed by such a people:
“the glutinous dish known throughout the [West African] diaspora as... fufu” (Jonell Nash).
diaspora. A dispersion of an originally homogeneous entity, such as a language or culture: “the diaspora of English into several mutually incomprehensible languages” (Randolph Quirk).
Some will take it as instructive, myself included, that the editors of the American Heritage Dictionary cited as a leading example of this usage, a usage which precisely mirrors Lawrence Wright's usage, to wit: "West African diaspora" - "Morrocan diaspora".
