By Daily Mail (U.S.) | Created at 2025-01-03 02:03:19 | Updated at 2025-01-05 06:49:06
2 days ago
The man who drove a truck into a crowd of New Year's Day revelers in New Orleans was part of a Muslim community in Houston with a scary history of hard-line Islamism, DailyMail.com can reveal.
Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, a Texas-born US citizen and Army veteran, rammed the crowd in the French Quarter, killing 14 and injuring dozens more, after declaring his support for ISIS. He was killed in a shootout with police.
The FBI has probed Jabbar's ties to ISIS and hunted for potential accomplices. One focus is his Muslim immigrant community in northern Houston, and nearby mosque Masjid Bilal, which is now swarming with police, agents and armored vehicles.
The mosque belongs to The Islamic Society of Greater Houston (ISGH), which runs 20 centers across Texas' biggest city. It officially promotes tolerance, but the group also has a troubling track record of extremist preaching.
This includes its former cleric Zoubir Bouchikhi, who has been deported from the US. Bouchikhi has called non-Muslims 'worse than animals,' and shared anti-Christian Saudi propaganda at his Houston mosques.
Since Jabbar's attack, the mosque and ISGH have gone quiet. They did not answer DailyMail.com's requests for comment, and have reportedly urged members to brush off requests for information from investigators and journalists.
That's according to an ISGH memo shared on social media, calling on congregants to refer queries to the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), an advocacy group with ties to the ultra-conservative Muslim Brotherhood.
'If anyone is contacted by the media, it is very important that you do not respond. If approached by the FBI and a response is necessary, please refer to CAIR and ISGH,' says the note.
The Islamic Society of Greater Houston once hired the Algerian cleric Zoubir Bouchikhi, who says non-Muslims are 'worse than animals'
Jabbar lived around the corner from the Masjid Bilal mosque and religious center, part of the Islamic Society of Greater Houston
'It is crucial that we stay united at this time as we condemn these terrible acts.'
Horror unfolded in Bourbon Street, in New Orleans, around 3.15am local time on Wednesday, when Jabbar drove a powerful white Ford F-150 Lightning EV into crowds ringing in 2025.
He was killed in a shootout with officers after he exited his vehicle and started shooting, injuring two NOLA police officers who are in a stable condition.
Shamsud Din Jabbar, 42, drove a white Ford SUV into pedestrians ringing in 2025 in New Orleans' French Quarter Wednesday around 3.15am local time
An ISIS flag and weapons were found inside the vehicle. The FBI is assessing Jabbar's ties to the violent armed Sunni group that was once a major force in Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere, but has since faded.
Agents are investigating the massacre 'as an act of terrorism' and New Orleans mayor LaToya Cantrell described it as a 'terrorist attack'.
Detectives are now focusing on Jabbar's home in a trailer park in the Rushwood neighborhood of northern Houston — a run-down bungalow with geese, chickens, and sheep roaming the yard.
It remains unclear exactly what motivated Jabbar, but reports suggest his life had gone off the rails after he quit the Army in July 2020. The cash-strapped father and double divorcee's real estate business was floundering.
Court records show Jabbar faced a deteriorating financial situation in 2022 while separating from his then-wife. Jabbar said he was behind on house payments and had accumulated credit card debt and wanted to quickly finalize the divorce.
It's also unclear how heavily involved he was with Masjid Bilal mosque, a sprawling double-story brick complex that also includes a school, which is just a few minutes' walk from his house.
The nearby religious center and ISGH have worked hard in recent years to distance themselves from the hardline Islamist views that gave rise to such violent jihadist groups as ISIS and al-Qaeda.
Its mosques, which were founded by Pakistani immigrants from the 1960s onward, are used as polling stations; leaders publicly proclaim a moderate form of Islam compatible with modern-day US lifestyles.
Police and FBI have descended in force on Jabbar's home in a trailer park in the Rushwood neighborhood of northern Houston
Harris County Sheriff's officers clear the media from the neighborhood where 42-year-old suspect Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar is believed to have lived
ISGH has hosted dozens of interfaith gatherings and worked with local Christian churches on charity food drives, according to CAIR.
But they also have a sketchy track record when it comes to hard line Islamist views, which were exposed after the 9/11 terror attacks on the US and tougher efforts to root out home-grown religious extremists.
Notably, ISGH in 2001 hired the Algerian cleric Bouchikhi, who served as the spiritual leader at a southeast Houston mosque, and who was arrested and then deported in 2011, reportedly for immigration violations.
Bouchikhi has a record of making extreme statements about non-Muslims and women that are at odds with ISGH's professed values.
In a video of a sermon from Bouchikhi's new home in Malaysia in 2020, he called non-Muslims: 'The worst of Allah's creations, even lower than animals are those who disbelieve and refuse to [believe].'
'When I see a sheep, I think the sheep is better than them,' added the firebrand, in a video publicized by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
In the same diatribe, Bouchikhi slams such 'sinners' as young women who 'parade in a miniskirt,' and says that tolerating homosexuality showcased the West's moral decline.
As Bouchikhi was preaching in Houston, ISGH also came under the scrutiny of Washington, DC-based Freedom House, which was probing the presence of hard line Saudi religious propaganda at US mosques.
The campaign group in 2005 named Masjid Bilal as one of two Houston mosques that offered congregants anti-American and anti-Jewish propaganda from Saudi Arabia's ultraconservative clerics.
Researchers found a copy of a book, Islamic Guidelines to Reform the Individual and Society, which forbids faithful Muslims from imitating others, or any form of 'supporting Jews, Christians, and communists against Muslims.'
The FBI did not answer DailyMail.com's queries about whether investigators were probing ISGH or its history with Islamist extremism in connection to the bloodbath in New Orleans.
Researchers in the 2000s found ultraconservative Saudi-funded Islamist 'propaganda' at Jabbar's local mosque
An ISIS flag and weapons were found inside the vehicle, as the FBI continues to assess Jabbar's connection to the terror group
The FBI on Thursday said Jabbar had acted alone, reversing its position from a day earlier that he likely worked with others in carrying out the deadly attack, which officials say was an act of terrorism inspired by ISIS.
The agency also revealed that the US citizen from Texas posted five videos on his Facebook account in the hours before the attack, in which he aligned himself with IS and said he had joined the group before last summer.
'This was an act of terrorism. It was premeditated and an evil act,' said Christopher Raia, the deputy assistant director of the FBI's counterterrorism division.
The attack killed 14 people, including an 18-year-old woman who had ambitions of becoming a nurse. Authorities initially put the death toll at 15, which included Jabbar, who was fatally shot in a firefight with police.
Officials had said Wednesday that they were seeking additional potential suspects in the attack, which occurred when Jabbar steered around a police blockade and plowed into a crowd.
In a statement, CAIR denounced Jabbar's 'senseless and infuriating' attack, and said it had nothing to do with the kind of Islam practiced by most Muslims in the US and beyond.
'His crime is the latest example of why cruel, merciless, bottom-feeding extremist groups have been rejected by the overwhelming majority of the Muslim world,' said the statement.
