With the revelation that the Bourbon Street terrorist who killed at least 15 people on Wednesday was born in America and seemingly lived a normal life at one point in time, the question has shifted to exactly who helped radicalize him. Having converted to Islam sometime in the last few years, Shamsud-Din Jabbar reportedly attended a local mosque just blocks away, and that mosque has now put out a statement on Instagram that is raising eyebrows.
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CONFIRMED posting by the mosque reportedly attended by the NOLA terrorist, instructing members to refer all inquiries by @FBI, law enforcement and media to legal representation of CAIR. pic.twitter.com/4tNIMlccWg
— Bree A Dail (@breeadail) January 2, 2025
Several things strike me about this. For one, when over a dozen people die in an Islamic terrorist attack, I’m not sure “the safety of our community” should be the most important thing in that equation. No one has attacked this mosque (or any mosque in the United States, for that matter) nor is there any reason to believe anyone will do so. The attacker who attended it did carry out an attack, though. So why the immediate inward focus?
The entire message reads like an order of protection for anyone who may have radicalized or assisted Jabbar in some way. The push to contact CAIR is a dead giveaway. For those unaware, the Council on American-Islamic Relations is an unindicted co-conspirator and supporter of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. It is a radical group that has long sought to protect Islamism at the cost of American lives. If CAIR is involved, you can bet there’s probably something going on under the surface.
Then there’s the putting of “act of terror” in quotation marks, as if there’s some question a member of ISIS who mowed down dozens of people and planted IEDs across the French Quarter is a terrorist or not. It comes across as very defensive and dismissive of those who perished. Further, why does this mosque need to “stay united” during this time? If the mosque had no part in Jabbar’s radicalization and subsequent attack, then there is nothing to stay united over regarding this case.
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Let’s be honest. If this were a Christian church putting out such a statement after one of its members committed a mass casualty terrorist attack, every legacy media outlet in the country would be digging deeper. That won’t happen here because the press takes a subservient approach to Islam due to its place on the intersectional hierarchy. Still, I hope there are some good reporters out there willing to poke around.
Because of freedom of religion, which is a very good thing in America, authorities must tread carefully and remain on the right side of the law in their investigation. With that said, the funding apparatuses of many of these mosques are connected to foreign entities, and there is a history of radicalization within them. Is that true for this specific mosque? We don’t know yet, but we need to find out.
