ASRA NOMANI: Islamists' familiar 'Triple D' strategy follows Bourbon Street terror attack

When Shamsud Din Jabbar, 42, 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 congregants a message to direct FBI inquiries to a special-interest group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and avoid speaking to the media.

But they didn’t have to say anything to me. I’ve seen this pattern before, as a former Wall Street Journal reporter who has investigated Islamic extremism for 23 years — since the brutal murder  of my colleague and friend, journalist Daniel Pearl, by Muslim militants in Karachi, for the crime of being an American, a Jew and a grandson of Israel.

NEW ORLEANS TRUCK ATTACK SUSPECT INSPIRED BY ISLAMIC STATE TERRORIST GROUP

First, a radicalized Muslim kills in the name of Islam. Then, 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.” 

Indeed, within 36 hours, 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.”

East of Houston, in Beaumont, Tex., Fahmee Al-Uqdah, an imam in Jabbar’s hometown, told a local TV station, KFDM/Fox 4, 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.” Al-Uqdah practices an offshoot of Islam established by a Black American leader, Imam W. Deen Mohammed, the son of Elijah Mohammed, founder of the Nation of Islam, led today by the virulently antisemitic Louis Farrakhan. It isn’t yet clear if Jabbar was a member of the W. Deen Mohammed school of Islam.

Finally, most likely in the coming days, CAIR officials will demonize anyone who focuses on Jabbar’s religious radicalization.

As a Muslim feminist and classic liberal born in India and raised in West Virginia, I co-founded the Muslim Reform Movement in 2015 with brave Muslims, like authors Zuhdi Jasser and Raheel Raza, to counter this triple-D strategy with honesty. Later, in 2022, we co-founded the Clarity Coalition with ex-Muslims, like author Yasmine Mohammed, and allies to challenge extremists and advocate for an Islam of women’s rights, human rights and grace. 

‘Ummah..is one body’

While officials at Masjid Bilal mosque have refused to confirm that Jabbar worshiped there, it is just a seven-minute walk from the trailer home on the 12000 block of Crescent Peak Drive in which he lived prior to the attack. Jabbar’s half-brother Abdur Jabbar told The New York Times “This is more some type of radicalization, not religion.”

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.”

But with religion very much about interpretation, radicalization can be religion. In his mobile home, Jabbar left a Quran open to verse 111 of Chapter 9, “Surah at-Tawbah,” which I call “the war verse,” for its edicts on war and promises of heaven for Muslims who wage violent jihad. The open page read, “They fight in His cause, and slay and are slain; a promise binding,” according to reporting from The Times of London.

The sermons offered at Masjid Bilal are emblematic of a wider, problematic, insular and rigid interpretation of Islam preached at far too many mosques. Reviewing scores of sermons posted on Masjid Bilal’s Facebook page, I found a portrait of the strictest interpretation of Islam, grace hardly to be found. While 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 the neighborhood mosque reflect a broader pattern that too many avoid scrutinizing, leaving critical gaps in understanding. Imams, or prayer leaders, railed against the LGBTQ community, deemed adopted children not worthy of the same status as biological children, relegated women to a segregated balcony space and scolded “doctors wearing scrubs” for failing to dress respectfully. The imams preach interpretations of Islam from the strictest schools of jurisprudence, or madhhab.

Most strikingly, imams delivered sermons absent of sympathy for the Jews massacred by Hamas terrorists in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Instead, there was a relentless focus on the “oppressors” of Palestinians.

On Oct. 9, 2023, in the first video posted after the massacre, the imam sat, with hands folded on his lap, and said solemnly, “We are praying for our brothers and sisters in Palestine…Give them aid and victory, inshallah,” God willing. There wasn’t a word of sympathy for Jews murdered by Hamas.

Four days later, on Oct. 13, the imam repeated a manipulative belief among ideologues that “the Muslim ummah,” or community of so-called believers, “is one body,” and he urged a new prayer for “our brothers and sisters in Palestine” and called to “end their suffering.”

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On Oct. 15, another imam at the mosque urged congregants to raise their voices for “our brothers and sisters in Palestine” against the “plight of Palestinians.” Not a word was offered for the Jews who had been slaughtered. This is where he also railed against the “LGBTQ” community.

Oct. 7 denial

On May 31, yet another imam spent much of his sermon railing against Israel, saying, “Wherever I go, I cannot give a talk without mentioning Falasteen, Gaza and West Bank,” using the Arabic word for Palestine.

“Every media mainstream channel in this country put the entire blame, the entire story, that this started just Oct. 7,” he said. “Hamas attacked the [sic] Israel. This is 100 percent not true. This genocide, this aggression is going on for the past 75 years.” The root cause of Oct. 7 was Israel’s “occupation,” “colonization” and “settlement.”

“If you see evil, start with your hand…” he guided the congregation, in a repeat of a hadith, or saying of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam. 

Indeed, Christopher Raia, deputy assistant director from the FBI’s counterterrorism division, said Jabbar joined the Islamic State this summer and careened onto Bourbon Street, hand on the steering wheel, with a belief he was in a “war between believers and nonbelievers.”

ASRA NOMANI