Arabs See American Financial Disaster as Divine Punishment
Israeli National News
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
October 11, 2008

(IsraelNN.com) The financial crisis sweeping the United States is Divine Punishment for the war in Iraq and other "sins," an American member of Al Qaeda charged. Adam Gadahn, a California native now living in Pakistan who has been indicted in a Los Angeles court for treason, said in a half-hour video speech that the economic woes serve as evidence of punishment to the "enemies of Islam."

"A crisis whose primary cause, in addition to the abortive and unsustainable crusades they are waging in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq, is their turning their backs on Allah's revealed laws," he stated.

Arab and Muslim leaders also expressed joy over the American crisis. Gaza de facto prime minister Ismail Haniyeh told Muslims at a Gazed mosque Friday, "We are witnessing the collapse of the American Empire. What's going on in America is a result of the violation of the rights of people in Palestine, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Muslims around the world."

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad earlier this week joined the Arab world's delight over the American economic crisis and said that Americans are "oppressors...Systems based on oppression and unrighteous positions will not endure."

An Iranian senior cleric, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, declared, "We are happy that the U.S. economy is in anarchy and the anarchy is reaching Europe."

However, Iran and oil-rich Arab countries also are feeling the repercussions of the impending recession accompanying the crash of American banks and stock markets around the world. The price of oil has plunged in the past several weeks from a record high of more than $140 a barrel to less than $90.

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