Don't Attribute Sudden Jihad Syndrome to Mental Illness

Understand What Really Happened in New Orleans on New Year's Day

The moment I first heard about the mass murders in New Orleans, I knew in my bones that the car rammer and shooter was a Muslim.

Call me "Islamophobic," call me "psychic," call me what you will.

Or call it what it is: Sudden, Personal Jihad Syndrome which has just afflicted yet another American citizen and Army veteran.

I am writing about Staff Sargeant Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar, who served in Afghanistan for a year, and in the United States Army for ten years--the terrorist who has just murdered 15 people and injured an unknown number of others on the first day of 2025. Jabbar had an ISIS flag "strapped" to the back of his rented truck. He allegedly had IED's there as well. Jabbar may--or may not--have had accomplices or supporters.

Jabbar lived in an all-Muslim trailer park in walking distance of a mosque, Masjid Bilal. He quoted from the Qu'ran online. He recently visited Egypt for ten days. Egypt??? How did he afford the trip given that he'd apparently maxed out his credit cards trying to keep up with child support payments.

Yes, Jabbar is an American citizen, a twice married father, and an Army veteran. (How do we deport someone like this before he strikes?Can we?)

Jabbar reminds me of Major Malik Nidal Hasan who served in the Navy and who killed or wounded 44 people at Ft Hood in 2009. Hassan was a psychiatrist of Arab/Jordanian descent. He was also an American citizen, a religious Muslim, who had been heard to be shouting "Allahu Akhbar" before or during his shooting rampage.

Like Jabbar, Hasan also had Islamic bumper stickers on his vehicles and argued with people about "radical Islam" which Hassan favored. He also tried to convert his non-Muslim psychiatric patients to Islam. Convert. His. Patients.

The same Instant Personal Jihad Syndrome also led Palestinian/Arab Sirhan Sirhan to assasinate Senator Robert Kennedy in cold blood in 1968 for America's support for Israel.

These three attackers are Jihadists. In radical Islamic circles they are not seen as mentally ill. Only "woke" Westerners tend to view them sympathetically as victims, (of hard times, of alleged racism, of alcohol or of drugs, of poverty, or of mental illness, etc. ) Some Westerners glamorize them as anti-racist heroes.

However, radical Islamists view them as defenders of the faith, holy warriors, who are martyring themselves on behalf of a world-wide Caliphate. Islamists only view them as "victims" if the West dares to stop them, jail them, try them--or kill them in self-defense.

Israel is merely trying to defend itself against precisely such Jihad. Such warriors, whether they act alone or in concert, are all shaped by an Islamist culture that is coming for infidels, for the West, and for all non-Islamist Muslims. Dissident anti-Islamist, Mosab Hassan Yousef, understand this very well. Just read his book, "The Son Of Hamas." Or watch his strong presentation at the Oxford Union.

I have been writing about this for nearly a quarter-century. I am a bit weary of having to repeat myself, again and again.