In the wake of the vehicular jihad attack in New Orleans in the early hours of New Year’s Day, authorities have been busy trying to figure out what “radicalized” Shamsud-Din Jabbar — that is, what turned him from an Army veteran who was presumably loyal to the United States into a mass murderer. This is a useful line of inquiry in order to try to prevent future attacks of this kind, but as is so often the case, the feds are barking up the wrong tree.
NBC News reported Saturday that unnamed “experts” have determined that Jabbar’s was a fairly ordinary case: they said that “the details that have emerged about Jabbar align with the typical pattern of how a veteran can be radicalized to violence.” It seems that it all comes from a downturn in Jabbar’s fortunes: “In the years leading up to Wednesday’s attack, Jabbar experienced his third divorce, accumulated significant debt and lost his corporate job. Divorce court records from January 2022 reveal he was facing business losses and credit card debt in the tens of thousands of dollars, along with more than $27,000 in overdue mortgage payments. By August of that year, his bank accounts held just $2,012, according to filings in the case.” Yeah, that may be it. But there are important ways in which this doesn’t explain a thing.
The most obvious problem with this is that there are numerous people in America today who are thrice-divorced and in debt, and in worse situations than that, and it never once occurs to them to drive a truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers. There are, moreover, aspects of Jabbar’s behavior that just don’t fit into the scenario of a man driven to despair by personal and professional downturns.
In a video he recorded shortly before his attack, Jabbar told his family that he had originally planned to kill them instead. “I wanted to record this message for my family,” the killer said. “I wanted you to know that I joined ISIS earlier this year.” He added with chilling directness: “I don’t want you to think I spared you willingly.” He explained that he had initially intended to hold a “celebration” for them so that those attending could “witness the killing of the apostates.” NBC helpfully adds that is “an apparent reference to killing them,” but doesn’t bother to pause to explain the significance of his reference to “apostates.”
Jabbar apparently considered his family to be apostates from Islam, whether formally by declaring that they had left the religion, or functionally, by having ceased to practice it. Either way, leaving Islam carries the death penalty in Islamic law, in accord with the Qur’an: “If they turn renegade, then take them and kill them wherever you find them” (4:89). Also, a hadith depicts Muhammad saying: “Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him” (Bukhari 9.84.57). The death penalty for apostasy is part of Islamic law according to all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence.
That’s why Jabbar makes sure to tell his family that he didn’t spare them willingly. According to FBI counterterrorism official Chris Raia, Jabbar opted to carry out his vehicular attack rather than kill his family because he was concerned that if he acted against his family alone, the ensuing media coverage wouldn’t highlight the “war between the believers and disbelievers.”
Related: New Orleans Jihadi’s Mosque Tells Members to Refer Inquirers to Hamas-Linked CAIR
That doesn’t sound like a guy who just snapped under the pressure of his life falling apart. That sounds like a convinced Muslim believer who was determined to act upon his deeply held convictions. In addition, at his home Jabbar had a large Qur’an open to this passage: “Indeed, Allah has bought from the believers their lives and their wealth, because the garden will be theirs, they will fight in the way of Allah and will kill and be killed.” (9:111) Could it be that he decided to carry out his attack in order to gain a place in the garden of paradise, in accord with Allah’s promise in this verse?
Despite all this and more, Jabbar’s brother insisted: “What he did does not represent Islam. This is more some type of radicalization, not religion.” Authorities will almost certainly agree, and it is a good bet that no law enforcement or intelligence officials will dare to consider the possibility that the Qur’an itself was the source of Jabbar’s “radicalization.” It’s not that the evidence isn’t there. It’s that it’s too inconvenient for them to consider.
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