UNITED NATIONS – As in the aftermath of any catastrophe, the Indian Ocean earthquake was followed by a host of conspiracy theories in the Middle Eastern press, including most prominently the possibility that it was caused by a nuclear experiment.

The man in charge of the United Nations relief effort, Jan Egeland, sought to dispel the rumors publicly yesterday. Asked by The New York Sun about reports that an American-Israeli-Indian nuclear explosion started the earthquake, Mr. Egeland said yesterday, “I would like to stop it right here and now. The seismic surveillance people around the world know exactly what happened. This is a big fault line, where it happened.”

He said he had given several interviews to Arabic-speaking TV networks urging viewers to donate to tsunami victims and other humanitarian causes. “I see there is a debate starting in the Arab countries, that I have contributed a little bit to – through my earlier remarks – of levels of generosity,” he said, referring to his famous quote about wealthy nations being “stingy.”

Several oil-rich Gulf states yesterday increased their donations by tenfold, collectively pledging $50 million. This was not enough in the eyes of several Arab commentators who noted that many of the hardest-hit countries supply a big slice of the Gulf’s labor market, and that some of them have large Muslim populations.

Saudi columnist Jamal Khashokji wrote in Kuwait’s Al-Watan daily that extremists have “hijacked” Islam, and that Saudi charities should go back to “moderation and tolerance” rather than terrorism.

At the same time, on Internet sites, through e-mail chain letters, in newspapers, and on TV, one theory kept popping up, best summed up by a headline in the Egyptian newspaper Al Osboa: “Was it American, Israeli, Indian nuclear tests that caused the earthquake?” A column by Ibrahim Karagul of the Turkish newspaper Yeni Safak similarly claimed that the calamity was triggered by nuclear tests conducted in the Indian Ocean “by India, the United States, and Israel.”

A slightly different version appeared in Iran’s pro-Khamenei daily, Kayhan. Accusing America of not warning the world in advance, the paper wrote, “We have to consider that an earthquake of this scale is very important for American satellites, since it may be a nuclear explosion by India in the middle of the Indian Ocean.”

Discarding the possibility that American satellites were unable to detect an underwater earthquake, Kayhan asked the potent question, “While a little student with little knowledge about tsunamis could predict the disaster and save the lives of hundreds of people, how can it be accepted that Americans with their super-modern equipment could not do that?”

At the same time, extremist Muslim preachers took to the air to explain God’s wrath. “If people are remiss in implementing God’s law and in being zealous and vengeful for His sake, Allah sets his soldiers in action to take revenge,” Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris said on Palestinian Authority TV Friday, according to Memri. Describing Southern Asia, he added, “Over there, there are Zionist and American investments. Over there they bring Muslims and others to prostitution. Over there, there are beaches, which they dubbed tourists’ paradise, while only a few meters away, the locals live in hell on earth.”

A professor at the Saudi Al-Imam University, Fawzan al-Fawzan, added in an interview, also translated by Memri, that the timing of the earthquake might have informed God’s decision to punish Asians. “It happened at Christmas, when fornicators and corrupt people from all over the world come to commit fornication and sexual perversion,” he said.

“Every calamity and terrorist attack since 9/11 has been blamed on the Zionists, the Jews, the Americans, and the Christians,” Memri’s Steve Stalinsky summarized.