One reason why so many people, on both the left and the right, have trouble seeing the threat of jihad violence and Sharia oppression is that so many Muslims are obviously nice people. How could anyone be expected to believe that Ahmed down at the office, the sweetest and gentlest guy you could possibly imagine, could be secretly plotting to carry out a jihad massacre? And of course, what any given individual believes and holds to be important does not necessarily align with the teachings of the religion he professes.
There are, however, unfortunate examples of nice Muslims waging jihad. One just unfolded in California.
On LinkedIn, Ammaad Akhtar describes himself as a “mechanical Engineering graduate. Outgoing and friendly with a strong motivation for success.” And he was no doubt all of those things, but there was another side to Ammaad Akhtar as well. The Department of Justice revealed that Akhtar pleaded guilty on Friday to “attempting to provide material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization.”
Does that mean that he was not actually “outgoing and friendly with a strong motivation for success”? Of course not. It just means that Akhtar was also deeply religious, and interested in doing some great deed to please his god. And so “between February 2025 and June 2025, Akhtar, a citizen of the United States, attempted to provide funds, weapons, and other equipment to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). He communicated online with an online undercover officer, whom he believed was a member of ISIS.”
In these communications, Akhtar repeatedly demonstrated the depth of his devotion and his determination to wage jihad for the sake of Allah. He “voiced his support for ISIS and jihad, expressed a desire to travel overseas to join and fight with ISIS, and stated a desire to send guns and money to ISIS.” He also “demonstrated a desire to provide support of ISIS and did so by providing financial funding on multiple occasions. After a few payments, the online undercover officer indicated that ISIS had procured several guns with the money Akhtar had sent. In his response, Akhtar said, ‘May Allah destroy our enemies’ and affirmed that he will send more money that same day.” That’s dedication.
Akhtar wasn’t content with just sending money. He “also talked about planning acts of violence, including conducting an attack against a specific individual and an attack utilizing homemade explosives. He said that he ‘want[s] to die in the cause of Allah fighting the kuffar [infidels]’ and asked for instructions on how to make a homemade explosive device in order ‘to make a boom’ at a populated event.”
Finally, in June 2025, he made his fateful mistake: “He met with an individual he believed was an ISIS associate, but who was actually an undercover agent. Akhtar provided clothing, binoculars, $400 cash, two loaded guns, and six additional magazines. Akhtar then swore bayat (a pledge of loyalty) to ISIS.”
And so now this friendly and outgoing mechanical engineer will not be going out anywhere for a good long stretch. But once again, this doesn’t mean that his self-description was inaccurate. There are, unfortunately, numerous examples of friendly, outgoing Muslims suddenly turning on their non-Muslim friends. Does this mean that every friendly, outgoing Muslim is suspect? Of course not. But it does call for realism in the face of a genuine threat.
On Feb. 15, 2022 in Egypt, a Muslim screaming “Allahu akbar” stabbed his Christian neighbor seven times. The New York Times on June 19, 2013 carried a photo with this caption: “Ibtisam Ali Aboud (with her son Jafar) says that her husband, a Syrian Alawite, was killed by his Sunni friend.”
Related: Muslim Influencer Reignites Debate About What Islam Really Is
Then there was future Boston Marathon jihad bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s Sept. 11, 2011 throat-slitting murder of his Jewish “best friend.” In September 2013, Christians in Maaloula, Syria said that their Muslim neighbors had aided jihad attacks against them. And in July 2014, Christian refugees from Mosul said that their Muslim neighbors had helped drive them out of the city. In 2024, a priest from Mosul, Father Zakariya, said: “We feel there is no safety in the city. Why? Because our own neighbors stole from us. I have a house in Mosul and not only me, many families. When we were displaced in 2014, the neighbors entered my house and stole my furniture and oil. How would I return to my house and knock on the door of my neighbor and ask them to return my furniture? We don’t have a future in Mosul. Our families feel afraid to live in Mosul especially if they have young daughters.”
An anecdote from the Ottoman Empire in the late nineteenth century: "Then one night, my husband came home and told me that the padisha had sent word that we were to kill all the Christians in our village, and that we would have to kill our neighbours. I was very angry, and told him that I did not care who gave such orders, they were wrong. These neighbours had always been kind to us, and if he dared to kill them Allah would pay us out. I tried all I could to stop him, but he killed them — killed them with his own hand.” (Sir Edwin Pears, Turkey and Its People, London: Methuen and Co., 1911, p. 39)
Should we not take notice of such incidents and ponder their implications? Or would it be “Islamophobic” to do anything other than continue to put our lives on the line?
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