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"ALLAH PUNISHED NEW ORLEANS"...
By Phares Op Ed on FDD Blog
Sep 3, 2005, 10:14

JIHADISTS: ALLAH PUNISHED NEW ORLEANS

Walid Phares


“allahu daraba al kafireen wal fasiqeen fi new orleen, wallahu daraba al mushrekeen el shiia fil iraq”

“Allah hit the infidels and the depraved in New Orleans, and Allah hit the Shiia apostate in Iraq.”

-al ansar chat room – Thursday September 1, 2005. 11 AM (EST)

When I logged in to one of the ansar’s voice chat rooms, I kind of expected to hear some sort of “interpretation” of the flood in Louisiana and Mississippi. I still remember the Jihadi elaboration on the south Asian Tsunami last January. Before I even listened to the self-declared “Imam-on-line,” I almost predicted the words: It had to have “infidels,” “Allah,” and “punishments.” And indeed these words and many others were there. Flooding the web with speeches, the voices of the ansars, close to al Qaida and the other Salafi Jihadists insisted with certitude that “Allah has punished America with winds and water.” Strangely, I remembered online rhetoric from months ago, when couple Salafi clerics announced that “soon, inshallah, Allah and his angels are going to begin the tadmeer (destruction) of evil America.” They repeated endlessly that “all what the mujahidin have to do is to fight and kill infidels wherever they can, and that Allah, pleased with them, will do the rest. He will destroy their cities, one after the other.”


In that ansar chat room today, it was a series of I- told-you-so.” The chief commissary was proud and assertive: allahu daraba al kafireen wal fasiqeen fi new orleen.” Which translate and rime well into “Allah hit the infidels and the depraved in New Orleans: Ironically, among the most cited cities on the list of satanic places in America, are Las Vegas, Manhattan, Los Angeles and New Orleans.


“Innaha ardul u'hr wal fisq wal lawaat” –It’s the land of prostitution, deprivation and homosexuality- says the cyber cadres. “It is where Allah would strike first, to show America how weak it is, how arrogant it has become.” The Salafi logic is totally ideological grounded in self established theology. To the Jihadi theoricians, since every single natural disaster is allowed by Allah, the hurricane that put New Orleans under waters is not just an act of God, but an act within the War against the infidels. Many other theologians and individuals from all religions believe in the godly design of natural phenomena, but they do not necessarily attribute to their supreme being, a geopolitical decision-making system. The Jihadists have been brainwashed to believe that Allah is part of their war against their enemies, or that they are part of Allah’s war against his enemies. Hence, it would have been impossible to their ideologues to skip Katrina’s wrath in America. In fact it was just too obvious for the Jihadists not to inscribe the hurricane, its devastation, its victims and the ensuing social unrest in their reading of religious politics. Everything they were taught by the clerics came together: America is at War with Islam; it has become the enemy of Allah; the Jihadists are fighting the US with all their resources, including suicide bombings; the clerics have predicted a divine intervention; the angels of death strike at one of America’s sin cities with winds and flood; and as a result of it, continue the commentators, “helicopters are shot at, their armed forces are now deployed inside their lands, and their economy will be going down.”

With this apocalyptic tale a Jihadist would believe in the Salafi preaching more than ever. The natural disaster and its consequences are already been captured by the fundamentalist ideologues not only as signs from Allah, but also victories against the infidels. Instead of compassion with the victims, expect incitement against America at large and its Government in particular.

And very interestingly, the al Qaida followers had a huge opportunity to claim that “Allah dislike the Shiites as much as he dislikes the infidels.” In fact, the Wahabi-inspired analysis in the chat room stated it clearly. Commenting on the stampede that killed next to a thousand Shiia pilgrims in Iraq, the voice said: “How can we miss the sign, it happened on the same day: Allah daraba al mushrekeen al shiia fil iraq” -Allah hit the Shiia apostate in Iraq- The Salafi Jihadists couldn't’t hope for a better coincidence: Americans and Shiia mass killed almost on the same day at thousands of miles away from each other. To the Terrorists it would be the sum of all messages. Now they can prove to the undecided, on both sides of the Ocean that Allah is on their side, not on the side of democracy and its promoters.

To defeat that purpose, Americans, Iraqis, and the democratic societies around the world must come together and deflect the hallucinations of the Terrorists: Americans must pour all their support to the victims of the disaster so that no one is left behind. The country must be mobilized to help the aching part of the nation. Iraqis must absorb the pain and resume the process of inclusion and democratization. And the international community must continue in its solidarity with the victims of natural disasters and Terrorism alike.

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Dr Walid Phares is a Senior fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies in Washington and a Professor of Comparative Politics.



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