The Masjid Bilal ISGH (Islamic Society of Greater Houston) mosque has become the focus of media attention ever since one of its congregants, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, drove a rented Ford F-150 pickup truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street on New Year's Day 2025, killing at least 15 people and injuring dozens more while flying an ISIS flag. Some controversy surrounds the mosque's social media posts advising congregants not to speak to the FBI about Jabbar but to refer all inquiries to CAIR and the Islamic Society of Greater Houston.
According to the New York Times, Jabbar "posted videos to Facebook proclaiming his support for the so-called Islamic State, or ISIS … Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar said in a video he posted online that he originally planned to hurt his relatives and friends but worried that news media coverage would not focus on the 'war between the believers and disbelievers,' according to Christopher Raia in the F.B.I.’s counterterrorism division."
Despite the FBI's belief that "the suspect said he had joined ISIS before this past summer" and their initial conviction that Jabbar had acted with others, the FBI changed its tune: "The man who drove a truck into a crowd in New Orleans appears to have acted alone, says Christopher Raia of the F.B.I.’s counterterrorism division."
At a stroke, all the talk about swearing allegiance to ISIS became irrelevant because there was no chain of command to an outside authority if he acted alone. Nor did advice from the mosque to its congregants not to talk to the FBI bear on anything since the suspect was a lone wolf. The media narrative is now that Jabbar was "inspired" by ISIS though not directed by the militant Islamic group. CNN attempted to capture this vague explanation of why the New Orleans mass murder occurred.
In a series of videos, the man responsible for the deadly New Year’s attack in New Orleans discussed planning to kill his family and having dreams that helped inspire him to join ISIS, according to multiple officials briefed on the investigation.… But Jabbar said in the videos he changed his plans because he wanted news headlines to focus on the “war between the believers and the disbelievers,” Raia said. Jabbar stated he had joined ISIS before this summer, Raia added.
His mind is said to have broken down due to intense financial hardship. The New York Post describes the squalid state of the suspect's trailer park home. "The terrorist who killed 15 people when he plowed his truck down crowded Bourbon Street in New Orleans was an American-born military veteran who was living in a run-down trailer park where he kept sheep and goats in the yard — just blocks from the local mosque." Here is no Jason Bourne, just an International Man of Misery. The basic idea now is that Jabbar's hatred for his family drove him to murder-suicide, and he concealed his motives by making it look like he was working for ISIS.
A few loose ends in the story remain, which, owing to the presumably disordered state of the perpetrator's mind, might never be tied up. Why, if he hated his family, did he not blame them? Why would he go through the trouble of framing his beloved mosque or defaming his Islamic faith to avoid blaming people he supposedly despised? Why use his empty wallet to buy an ISIS flag? Above all, if the FBI believes that Jabbar was "100 per cent inspired by ISIS," what was the source of that inspiration? What turned a man into the driver of a two-ton cannonball careening through New Orleans?
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Apparently, we live in the age of the demented loner. The FBI named Thomas Matthew Crooks, a cook in a nursing home, as the suspect in an assassination attempt on Donald Trump during a rally in Butler, Pa. The FBI's investigation suggested Crooks acted alone. Ryan Wesley Routh, a 58-year-old man from Hawaii, was arrested after an apparent assassination attempt on Trump at the President-elect's West Palm Beach golf club. Despite Routh's political views, criminal history, and activities related to Ukraine, there's no mention in the available reports of accomplices or co-conspirators. The German Christmas market attack in Magdeburg was carried out by Taleb Al Abdulmohsen, a 50-year-old Saudi psychiatrist. German authorities, including Saxony-Anhalt's Premier Reiner Haseloff and the local prosecutor's office, have stated that the suspect acted alone.
Why are there so many lone wolf assassins? One counterintuitive answer is that solo killers are the most likely to escape the protective ring of informers which security services employ to detect threats and survive to make the attempt. In the words of Frederick Forsyth's fictitious "Jackal," the outsider alone can get through where the OAS could not: "Your organization is so riddled with informers that nothing you decide is a secret for long. No, the job would have to be done by an outsider. The only question would be by whom, and for how much." The answer suggested by the FBI: the hit job is best done by a nobody for nothing.
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