Late at night, during New Year’s Eve celebrations in New Orleans, an islamofascist mass murderer drove into a crowd, driving an electric truck he had rented from a car-sharing app, to which he had affixed a huge ISIS flag, carrying two firearms (at least one of which he had stolen), along with some quantity of handmade explosive devices.
He drove through the crowd, mowing down as many innocent revelers as he could, then got out and started shooting. He was fortunately shot dead in this firefight. At this writing, he single-handedly killed at least 14 and injured at least 35 more in America’s first terrorist attack of 2025.
The FBI first denied that it was a terrorist attack, even as local police were confirming that, of course, it obviously was. They began by claiming to be studying to determine his motivation, as if anyone on earth couldn’t figure it out.
In most of the footage shared in the first few hours, the ISIS flag had been wrapped up to disguise the killer’s affiliation. One wonders why. When they couldn’t keep a lid on that fact after a few hours, they finally gave up denying it.
And when the killer’s name was finally revealed, the effort to hide his motivation finally became impossible. This 42-year-old college grad, US military veteran, and IT professional turns out to have been born and raised in the United States. His name was Shamsud Din Jabbar.
His brother says the family was raised Christian, but that Shamsud converted to islam on his own.
Before we analyze the story end of such an event, we should always remember that the perpetrator is the first guilty party, no matter how many other parties may share blame. This one man – Shamsud Din Jabbar – murdered those fourteen innocents, and injured those dozens of additional innocents, in cold blood, with full intent. He is 100% responsible for his actions, and he would merit swift capital punishment if he had lived to see trial.
And, incidentally, the killer himself should never be counted in the casualty total; he doesn’t deserve the honor of being considered a loss.
This being said, however, what kind of questions did the members of the press ask, in news conferences and wire articles, as the day went by?
“How did he get around the barricades?” “Why wasn’t he caught earlier?” “Was he on the FBI’s radar before?” “Would gun control have helped?” “Will there be stronger barricades for the next big event in town?” “Will future events have more security?”
Perhaps some of those questions are legitimate. In a real world in which the government allows all kinds of criminals and enemy agents free access across the United States, yes, both government and individual individuals need to do whatever they can think of to thwart such villains.
But they still aren’t the main questions.
The main questions, the overarching ones, are, “When will we recognize that we are stuck in a 1400 year long war, one that we didn’t start but nevertheless one that is aimed right at us… and what are we doing to face and eliminate that threat?”
In a war against a foreign country, you can forbid your citizens from traveling to it until there is peace, and you can deport its agents from your own country.
But this is not a war against a foreign country.
In a way, it’s not even a war against a stateless foreign military or terrorist organization. We tell ourselves that the enemy is ISIS, because of the flag that Din Jabbar was flying from the back of the truck, so we just need to wipe out ISIS. But that’s not true either. Because ISIS itself is just one of the many thousands of manifestations of that 1400 year old enemy.
Global jihad was not invented by Ayatollah Khomeini, or Osama bin Laden, or any other modern terror leader. The call to conquer the world for Islam is in the Koran. This call is believed to bind all devout Muslims who are taught to obey these rules literally.
Now, that’s not to say that all Muslims support jihad, of course. Lots of muslims disregard that call, and are totally peaceful. Unfortunately, lots of others support it financially or otherwise, even if they don’t actively participate themselves. And it’s almost impossible for an outsider to know whether a specific adherent is peaceful, or jihadist, or just a silent backer.
This country most likely has thousands of Shamsud din Jabbars in it at any moment. They don’t set off bombs or drive trucks through crowds every day; they live a seemingly normal, peaceful life, going to work, paying their bills, mowing their lawns, until the day when they finally decide it’s time for their single “blaze of glory.”
And then their neighbors will always make the usual comments: “He was a nice guy.” “Quiet neighbor.” “Hardworking guy.” “Kept to himself.” Or even, “Sure seemed like a pillar of the community.”
From the outside, we often cannot tell whether a mosque or “islamic cultural center” is jihadist or anti-jihadist. Most muslims cannot bring themselves to say they are anti-jihadist because the way their book is written, it’s undeniably in the text. So, even peaceful clerics often don’t actively teach against jihad; they have to make do with simply not teaching jihad. They think they’ve done a good job simply by not calling for the global caliphate. And while they may think they’re trying to be peaceful, this leaves their flocks susceptible when they encounter a solid jihadist push elsewhere.
And they will.
There are chat groups, facebook pages, youtubers, etc., both on the public internet and on the dark web, where jihadists proselytize 24/7 to likely prospects.
There are public schools, and even publicly funded private schools, where teachers and professors get away with preaching jihad to their students.
There are chaplains in the armed forces and the ROTC, and chaplains in prisons as well, who preach jihad to their toughest, most potentially dangerous audiences.
When we study an incident like the lethal NYE attacks in New Orleans, the issue appears daunting, especially if we look at it as a crime problem. Tweaking the way we vet vehicle renters, tweaking the way we install street barricades, tweaking the way we design parade routes or concert venue doorways or stadium entrances – 99.9% of the time, these are restrictions on the American way of life, affecting law-abiding citizens, and will never affect a terrorist attempt anyway.
But that’s where the press looks. And that’s where the typical politician looks.
Instead, the real solution is to see this not as a crime problem at all, but as a foreign policy issue. This is about national security.
Jihad is an anti-American philosophy – an evil, homicidal concept which our founding fathers would never have intended to be covered by the protections of the First Amendment.
There have been enough attacks over the years that this issue merits a national decision at the Washington level. Our federal government must clarify that the Bill of Rights is not a suicide pact; nothing in the First Amendment protects the teaching of jihad or the organizing of anti-American terror cells in any way.
Either mosques, madrassahs, and islamic cultural centers renounce the concept of jihad as an antiquated and obsolete theory, forbidden by modern islam, or they don’t.
And if they don’t, they must be shut down, and their training must be forbidden.
This still won’t be perfect; there are certain challenges in islam, such as taquiyya, that will always make it a more dangerous “religion” than any other. But at least a reform version of islam, if such a thing is possible, would make it possible for America to coexist with it.
Twice in the past ten years, two world leaders – General el-Sisi of Egypt and President Trump of the United States – have delivered specific calls for such sensible islamic reform to audiences of muslim leaders. And in each instance? Crickets.
But until such reforms are in place – verifiably – islam needs to be decertified as a “religion” in the United States, and be recognized instead as a foreign agency, forbidden from training or positive representation in such sectors as education, prison, law enforcement and the military.
We may not be able to stop every attack or put an end to such toxic ideas, but at least we can stop our tax dollars from promoting and funding their spread.
Copyright 2024 John F. Di Leo
John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation and trade compliance professional and consultant. President of the Ethnic American Council in the 1980s and Chairman of the Milwaukee County Republican Party in the 1990s, his book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel) and his political satires on the current administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I, II, and III), are available in either eBook or paperback, only on Amazon.
His newest nonfiction book, “Current Events and the Issues of Our Age,” was released in 2024, and is also available exclusively on Amazon.
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