When Shamsud Din Jabbar, 42, deliberately rammed his white Ford F-150 pickup truck into New Year’s Eve revelers on Bourbon Street in New Orleans’ French Quarter, the leaders at his neighborhood mosque, Masjid Bilal off Adel Road in Houston, sent a message to their congregants to direct FBI inquiries to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and avoid speaking to the media. This is a pattern I’ve seen before, as a former Wall Street Journal reporter who has investigated Islamic extremism for 23 years.
Radicalized Muslims like Jabbar kill in the name of Islam, and groups like CAIR deploy a strategy I call “triple-D”: Denying the crime had anything to do with Islam, deflecting with excuses and then demonizing anyone who calls out the terrorism as an “Islamophobe.” CAIR issued a statement, denying the problem of Islamic extremism by claiming it’s been “rejected by the overwhelming majority of the Muslim world.” It then deflected from the killer’s religious radicalization by describing him as a “man with a history of drunk driving and spousal abuse.”
Fahmee Al-Uqdah, an imam at Jabbar’s hometown, told a local TV station that Jabbar’s family asked him to deliver a message that “the tragic incident was driven by hatred and ignorance, and Jabbar’s actions do not reflect the religion of Islam.” But it’s unclear whether these sermons influenced Jabbar, they reflect a broader pattern that too many avoid scrutinizing, leaving critical gaps in understanding.
The sermons at Masjid Bilal, where Jabbar may have worshipped, are emblematic of a strict and rigid interpretation of Islam. I have reviewed scores of sermons posted on the mosque’s Facebook page, and they portray a strict interpretation of Islam. Imams rail against the LGBTQ community, deeming adopted children not worthy of the same status as biological children, relegating women to a segregated balcony space, and scolding “doctors wearing scrubs” for failing to dress respectfully. The imams also preach from the strictest schools of Islamic jurisprudence, or madhhab.
The imams’ sermons also offer little sympathy for the Jews massacred by Hamas terrorists in Israel on October 7, 2023. Instead, they focus on the “oppressors” of Palestinians. One imam prayed for “our brothers and sisters in Palestine…Give them aid and victory, inshallah,” God willing, but didn’t mention the Jews massacred by Hamas. Another imam repeated a manipulative belief among ideologues that “the Muslim ummah, or community of so-called believers, is one body,” and urged a new prayer for the Palestinians and called for “end[ing] their suffering.” Not a word was offered for the Jews who had been slaughtered.
