The Counterterrorism Blog: Jihadists: "Allah punished New Orleans": "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."

...

"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."

(Via Salon.)