Jihadenfreude

Kish Island, Iran - Tuesday, Oct. 14

I can’t claim credit for the title of this entry. Used to describe the Muslim world’s delight at seeing the financial meltdown in the West, it first appeared in a New York Times blog written by my friend and colleague Stephen Farrell, that paper’s Baghdad correspondent.

Nonetheless, I thought I’d chip in with a few examples from The Tehran Times, the turgid government-run newspaper that is the only English reading I’ve come across on this island.

“The U.S. is slowly but surely being ravaged by demons of its own design,” correspondent Randeep Ramesh reported in a recent edition. “The U.S. has been gobbling up the world's resources – be it labor, capital or minerals – so that Americans can live beyond their means. That these might run out has never bothered U.S. leaders.”

In today’s edition, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini chipped in with a few thoughts of his own. “Liberal democracy, with all its political, economic and military power has been knocked to the ground before the eyes of all the world,” the Times quoted him as saying. “Today, the false bubble of money has popped in the Western world… and they themselves say that the era of U.S. hegemony has come to an end.”

Ayatollah Khameini would have you all know that “the ideology of Islamic thought” will gain from democracy’s downfall.