Flood assurance: Koranic weather forecast.

MASSIVE TSUNAMIS will wipe out the United States in 2007, according to Ziad Silwadi. The Palestinian Koranic scholar has become convinced that passages in the Koran dealing with the divine punishment of terrible sin are actually about the U.S. Silwadi recently published these findings because, as he puts it, "what is about to happen is extremely shocking and frightening." The Jerusalem Post reports that Silwadi's study "has caught the attention of millions of Muslims worldwide."

Just as proud and arrogant Pharaoh was drowned by heavenly decree, Silwadi argues, so will proud and arrogant America be submerged for its sins, including genocide, slavery, and the use of atomic weapons. "International law penalizes such crimes," the Post quotes Silwadi as saying. "If no one on earth is capable of punishing [the U.S.], Allah was and remains able to do so. All these actions have been documented by Allah in a big archive called the Koran." To arrive at the exact year of this approaching catastrophe, Silwadi did what most end-of-the-world millennialists do: performed a series of arcane calculations involving verse counting.

The scholar seems to have mixed feelings about the matter. On one hand, he believes "the world would be better off with a U.S. that is not a superpower and that does not take advantage of weak nations." On the other hand, he expects the world economy to sink along with the United States. "The world will certainly lose a lot if and when this disaster occurs," he says, "because of the great services that American society has rendered to the economy, industry and science."