The terrifying history of Islamist extremism at New Orleans terrorist Shamsud Din Jabbar’s local mosque

The man who drove a truck into a crowd of New Year’s celebrants in New Orleans was part of a Muslim community in Houston with a terrifying history of hard-line Islamism, DailyMail.com can reveal.

Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, a Texas-born U.S. citizen and Army veteran, rammed the crowd in the French Quarter, killing 14 people and wounding dozens of others, after voicing his support for ISIS. He was killed during a shootout with police.

The FBI has been investigating Jabbar’s ties to ISIS and looking for possible accomplices. One focus is its Muslim immigrant community in north Houston, and the nearby Masjid Bilal mosque, now teeming with police, officers and armored vehicles.

The mosque belongs to the Islamic Society of Greater Houston (ISGH), which operates twenty centers throughout Texas’ largest city. It officially promotes tolerance, but the group also has a troubling record of extremist preaching.

This also applies to 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 in his Houston mosques.

Since Jabbar’s attack, it has become quiet in the mosque and ISGH. They did not return DailyMail.com’s requests for comment and have reportedly urged members to reject requests for information from researchers and journalists.

This is stated in a memo from ISGH shared on social media, in which congregants are urged to refer questions to the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), an advocacy group with ties to the ultra-conservative Muslim Brotherhood.

‘If someone is approached by the media, it is very important that you do not respond. If contacted by the FBI and a response is required, refer to CAIR and ISGH,” the note said.

“It is crucial that we remain united at this time and condemn these terrible acts.”

Horror unfolded on Wednesday around 3:15 a.m. local time on Bourbon Street, in New Orleans, when Jabbar drove a powerful white Ford F-150 Lightning EV into the crowd that sounded like 2025.

He was killed during a shootout with officers after he exited his vehicle and began shooting, wounding two NOLA police officers who are in stable condition.

An ISIS flag and weapons were found in the vehicle. The FBI is investigating Jabbar’s ties to the violent armed Sunni group that was once a major force in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere but has since faded.

Officers are investigating the massacre “as an act of terror” 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 north Houston: a dilapidated bungalow with geese, chickens and sheep roaming the yard.

It remains unclear what exactly motivated Jabbar, but there are reports that his life went off the rails after he left the military in July 2020.

Court records show that Jabbar faced a deteriorating financial situation in 2022 when he separated from his then-wife. Jabbar said he was behind on house payments, had racked up credit card debt and wanted to finalize the divorce quickly.

It is also unclear how closely he was involved with the Masjid Bilal Mosque, a sprawling two-story brick complex that also includes a school, just a few minutes’ walk from his home.

The nearby religious center and ISGH have worked hard in recent years to distance themselves from the hardline Islamic views that gave rise to violent jihadist groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda.

The mosques, founded by Pakistani immigrants from the 1960s onwards, are used as polling stations; leaders publicly proclaim a moderate form of Islam compatible with modern American lifestyles.

ISGH has organized dozens of interfaith gatherings and collaborated with local Christian churches on charity food drives. according to CAIR.

But they also have a sketchy record of hardline Islamist positions, which came to light after the September 11 terror attacks on the US and harder efforts to root out homegrown religious extremists.

Notably, in 2001, ISGH hired Algerian cleric Bouchikhi, who served as spiritual leader at a mosque in southeast Houston, and who was arrested and subsequently deported in 2011, allegedly for immigration violations.

Bouchikhi has a reputation for making extreme statements about non-Muslims and women that conflict with ISGH’s professed values.

In a video of a sermon from Bouchikhi’s new home in Malaysia in 2020, he called on non-Muslims: ‘The worst of Allah’s creations, even lower than animals, are those who disbelieve and refuse [believe].’

“When I see a sheep, I think the sheep is better than them,” the rioter added in a video published by the Media Research Institute for the Middle East.

In the same tirade, Bouchikhi denounces such “sinners” as young women who “parade in a miniskirt,” saying that tolerating homosexuality shows the moral decline of the West.

While Bouchikhi was preaching in Houston, ISGH also came under scrutiny from the Washington DC-based Freedom House, which investigated the presence of harsh Saudi religious propaganda in American mosques.

Enter the action group 2005 called Masjid Bilal as one of two mosques in Houston that served 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 “support for Jews, Christians and communists against Muslims.”

The FBI did not answer questions from DailyMail.com about whether investigators were looking into ISGH or its history with Islamist extremism in connection with the New Orleans massacre.

The FBI said Thursday that Jabbar had acted alone, reversing its position a day earlier that he likely worked with others in carrying out the deadly attack, which officials said was an act of terror 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 joined IS and said he had joined the group before last summer.

‘This was an act of terror. It was premeditated and an evil act,” said Christopher Raia, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division.

Fourteen people were killed in the attack, including an 18-year-old woman who aspired to become a nurse. Authorities initially estimated the death toll at 15, including Jabbar, who was fatally shot during a shootout with police.

Officials had said Wednesday they were looking for more potential suspects in the attack, which occurred when Jabbar bypassed a police blockade and drove into a crowd.

In a statement, CAIR denounced Jabbar’s “senseless and infuriating” attack, saying it had nothing to do with the brand of Islam practiced by most Muslims in the US and abroad.

“His crime is the latest example of why cruel, ruthless, bottom-feeding extremist groups have been rejected by the overwhelming majority of the Muslim world,” the statement said.