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 terrifying history of hardline Islam, DailyMail.com can reveal.
Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, a Texas-born U.S. citizen and Army veteran, charged into the crowd in the French Quarter, killing 14 and wounding dozens more, after declaring his support for ISIS. He died in a shootout with the police.
The FBI has investigated Jabbar’s ties to ISIS and searched for possible accomplices. One focus is its Muslim immigrant community in north Houston and the nearby Masjid Bilal mosque, which is now packed with police, agents and armored vehicles.
The mosque belongs to the Islamic Society of Greater Houston (ISGH), which operates 20 centers in Texas’ largest city. It officially promotes tolerance, but the group also has a troubling history of extremist preaching.
This includes his former cleric Zoubir Bouchikhi, who has been deported from the United States. Bouchikhi has called non-Muslims “worse than animals” and has shared anti-Christian Saudi propaganda in his Houston mosques.
Since Jabbar’s attack, the mosque and the ISGH have fallen silent. They did not respond to requests for comment from DailyMail.com and reportedly urged their members to ignore requests for information from researchers and journalists.
This is according to an ISGH memo shared on social media, asking congregants to refer questions to the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), an advocacy group linked to the ultra-conservative Muslim Brotherhood.
‘If someone is contacted by the media, it is very important that they do not respond. “If the FBI approaches and a response is necessary, consult CAIR and ISGH,” the memo says.
The Islamic Society of Greater Houston once hired 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 stand united at this time as we condemn these terrible acts.”
The horror unfolded on Bourbon Street in New Orleans around 3:15 a.m. local time on Wednesday, when Jabbar drove a powerful white Ford F-150 Lightning EV into a crowd announcing the year 2025.
He died in a shootout with officers after exiting his vehicle and starting shooting, wounding two NOLA police officers who are in stable condition.
Shamsud Din Jabbar, 42, drove a white Ford pickup truck into pedestrians advertising 2025 in New Orleans’ French Quarter on Wednesday around 3:15 a.m. local time.
An ISIS flag and weapons were found inside the vehicle. The FBI is assessing Jabbar’s ties to the violent Sunni armed 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 north Houston’s Rushwood neighborhood: a dilapidated bungalow with geese, chickens and sheep roaming the yard.
It’s unclear exactly what motivated Jabbar, but reports suggest his life went off the rails after he left the military in July 2020. The cash-strapped, double-divorced father’s real estate business was faltering.
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 racked up credit card debt and wanted to finalize the divorce quickly.
It is also unclear how involved he was with the Masjid Bilal mosque, a sprawling two-story brick complex that also includes a school, which is 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 Islamist views that gave rise to such violent jihadist groups as ISIS and Al Qaeda.
Its mosques, founded by Pakistani immigrants beginning in the 1960s, are used as polling stations; Leaders publicly proclaim a moderate form of Islam compatible with modern American lifestyles.
Police and the FBI have descended on Jabbar’s home in a trailer park in the Rushwood neighborhood of north Houston.
Harris County sheriff’s deputies clear media from the neighborhood where suspect Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar, 42, 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 record when it comes to hardline Islamist views, which were exposed after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States and tougher efforts to root out homegrown religious extremists.
In particular, ISGH hired in 2001 Algerian cleric Bouchikhi, who served as a spiritual leader at a southeast Houston mosque, and who was arrested and then deported in 2011, allegedly for immigration violations.
Bouchikhi has a history of making extreme statements about non-Muslims and women that are at odds with the ISGH’s professed values.
In a sermon video from Bouchikhi’s new home in Malaysia in 2020, he called out to non-Muslims: “The worst creations of Allah, even lower than animals, are those who do not believe and refuse to (believe).”
“When I see a sheep, I think that the sheep is better than them,” added the blight, in a video broadcast by the Middle East Media Research Institute.
In the same tirade, Bouchikhi criticizes these “sinners” as young women who “parade around in miniskirts” and says that tolerating homosexuality shows the moral decline of the West.
While Bouchikhi preached in Houston, the ISGH also came under the scrutiny of Washington, D.C.-based Freedom House, which was investigating the presence of hardline Saudi religious propaganda in American mosques.
The campaign group in 2005 named Masjid Bilal as one of two Houston mosques that offered their parishioners anti-American and anti-Jewish propaganda by ultra-conservative clerics in Saudi Arabia.
Investigators found a copy of a book, Islamic Guidelines for Reforming the Individual and Society, which prohibits faithful Muslims from imitating others or any form of “supporting Jews, Christians and Communists against Muslims.”
The FBI did not respond to questions from DailyMail.com about whether investigators were looking into ISGH or its history with Islamist extremism in connection with the New Orleans bloodbath.
Researchers in the 2000s found ultraconservative Islamist “propaganda” funded by Saudi Arabia at the local Jabbar mosque.
An ISIS flag and weapons were found inside the vehicle, as the FBI continues to evaluate Jabbar’s connection to the terrorist group.
On Thursday, the FBI said Jabbar had acted alone, reversing its position from the previous day that he likely worked with others to carry out the deadly attack, which officials said was an act of terrorism inspired by ISIS.
The agency also revealed that the American 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 a premeditated and evil act,” said Christopher Raia, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division.
The attack killed 14 people, including an 18-year-old woman who aspired to become a nurse. Authorities initially put the death toll at 15, including Jabbar, who was shot dead in a shootout with police.
Authorities had said Wednesday they were looking for additional potential suspects in the attack, which occurred when Jabbar dodged a police blockade and crashed into a crowd.
In a statement, CAIR denounced Jabbar’s “senseless and infuriating” attack and said it had nothing to do with the type of Islam practiced by the majority of Muslims in the United States and beyond.
“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.