How America’s DEI Bureaucracy Empowers Islamists: Part One

As Americans celebrated the arrival of 2025, and with it the imminent inauguration of President Trump, Texas-born terrorist Shamsud-Din Jabbar plowed a truck into crowds on Bourbon Street, in New Orleans’ French Quarter, killing 14 and injuring 35. He was shot dead while exchanging gunfire with attending officers. He had hidden two IEDs earlier that day, and had a remote detonator in the truck cab — but the FBI were able to render them safe after the attack. The FBI quickly deployed Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Alethea Duncan to tell the press that it was “not a terrorist incident”. No sooner than the next day was this retracted, with Deputy Assistant Director, Christopher Raia saying, without ambiguity, that it “was an act of terrorism. It was premeditated and an evil act”, and that Jabar “was 100% inspired by ISIS.”

Jabbar’s brother Abdur told the New York Times that they were raised as Christians, and that Jabbar recently converted to Islam — before saying “This is more some type of radicalization, not religion.” But the facts do not support this interpretation. New York Post reporters found a Quran in his home, open on Surah At-Tawbah 9:107-111, which says that to cut out the hearts of hypocrites and non-believers, to “fight in His [Allah’s] Cause, and slay and [be] slain”, is the “achievement supreme”. Footage of Jabbar’s mosque, Masjid Bilal in Houston, shows Imam Eiad Soudan justifying how “Hitler, with the nice mustache,” persecuted Jews because “they were in control of the economy”.

“[Jews] have many problems, but that’s one of the main problems — they like to take control of the economy. Everywhere they go… as long as they get to the goal, the means don’t matter. Interest, usury, is haram [prohibited] for them. Still, they use it to get control of the economy…”

Jabbar flew an ISIS flag from the trailer hitch of the rented Ford F-150 Lightning, and posted five Facebook videos just before the attack in which he claimed to have joined ISIS the summer prior. (He had traveled to Cairo, Egypt in 2023.) In the first video, Jabbar explained that he abandoned an initial plan to target his ex-wife and her family, because the personal nature of the attack would detract from the “war between the believers and the disbelievers.” It is clear that Jabbar derived inspiration for his attack from Islamist movements, his mosque, and scripture. As I wrote recently for Courage Media, there are abundant verses in the Quran and Hadiths which psychopaths might cite to justify their crimes. Unfortunately, “peaceful Muslims” are often those who haven’t put every passage into practice.

Jabbar’s act of Jihad has all the characteristics of previous Islamist attacks in Europe, and the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013. But what is abnormal here is that Jabbar was a US Army veteran. Jabbar joined the Army in 2006, served at bases in North Carolina and Alaska, and was deployed to Afghanistan for 11 months in 2009. He was promoted to staff sergeant in 2013, and honorably discharged after five years as a reservist. He then worked for consulting firm Deloitte — which provides commercial advice to among other clients, the US government. Given his proximity to the military and intelligence services, how was Jabbar’s radicalisation and premeditated terror attack not caught by surveillance and prevented? The FBI claims to have thwarted multiple Islamist plots in 2024. Why was Jabbar not on a terror watch-list?

Jabbar’s case has parallels with Fort Hood shooter, former U.S. Army major Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 and injured 32 on November 5, 2009. He also shouted “Allahu akbar” while shooting. Hasan was born to Palestinian immigrants in Arlington, Virginia, and enlisted straight after high-school. While still serving, Hasan became enthralled by khutbahs by Al-Muhajiroun founder Anjem Choudary and U.S.-born Al-Qaeda organiser Anwar al-Awlaki. Hasan exchanged emails with al-Awlaki — who praised Hasan as “a hero” on his website after the shooting:

“The only way a Muslim could Islamically justify serving as a soldier in the US army is if his intention is to follow the footsteps of men like Nidal.”

Hasan had also delivered a “Koranic Worldview” presentation to senior Army doctors at Walter Reed Medical Center, saying “It’s getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims,” and that Muslims should conscientiously object to fighting wars against Islamist groups in the Middle East. Fellow students at the Pentagon’s medical school told TIME Magazine that:

“We asked him pointedly, ‘Nidal, do you consider Shari’a law to transcend the Constitution of the United States?’ And he said, ‘Yes,’ ” a classmate told TIME on Monday. “We asked him if homicidal bombers were rewarded for their acts with 72 virgins in heaven and he responded, ‘I’ve done the research — yes.’ Those are comments he made in front of the class.” But such statements apparently didn’t trigger an inquiry. “I was astounded and went to multiple faculty and asked why he was even in the Army,” the officer said. “Political correctness squelched any opportunity to confront him.”

Just like Jabbar, Hasan’s Islamist sympathies were not flagged by intelligence agencies before the shooting. A Senate Committee on Homeland Security report concluded that:

 “Although neither DoD nor the FBI had specific information concerning the time, place, or nature of the attack, they collectively had sufficient information to have detected Hasan’s radicalization to violent Islamist extremism but failed both to understand and to act on it. Our investigation found specific and systemic failures in the government’s handling of the Hasan case and raises additional concerns about what may be broader systemic issues.”

What were these “systemic issues”? If this was all happening while on Department of Defence property, why did none of the above agencies notice? Could Jabbar, like Hasan, have made contact with a radical cleric while in the U.S. military? Did tiptoeing around accusations of Islamophobia cause people to ignore or avoid reporting any obvious warning signs? 

This is the case in my husband’s country, the United Kingdom. Despite being banned from engaging with government departments, it was found that, in 2023, the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) had nominated imams to become chaplains in Britain’s armed forces. The ban was enacted in 2009, when MCB’s Deputy Director-General, Dr Daud Abdullah had signed the Istanbul Declaration, calling to “carry on with the jihad and resistance against the occupier until the liberation of all Palestine”, and stating “the sending of foreign warships into Muslim waters, claiming to control the borders and prevent the smuggling of arms to Gaza, [is] a declaration of war, [which] must be rejected and fought by all means and ways.” This was interpreted as calling for attacks on the British Royal Navy — a claim the MCB denied. Under Abdullah, the MCB led a six-year boycott of Holocaust Memorial Day. On October 8th 2023, the MCB called for an “end to the violence in and around Gaza”, without mentioning the murders and rapes committed by Hamas on the 7th. In 2015, the British government published a report which said “for some years the Muslim Brotherhood … played an important role in establishing and then running the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB).”

Both the prior Conservative and new Labour governments insist they maintain a policy of non-engagement with the MCB; but three-quarters (£326,000) of the MCB’s Charitable Foundation funding came from Kickstart, a Department of Work and Pensions scheme, in 2023. MCB’s deputy secretary-general Mohammed Kozbar was advising the Crown Prosecution Service’s (CPS) hate crime “scrutiny panel”, the Metropolitan Police’s London Muslim Communities Forum, and met with London Mayor Sadiq Khan. Kozbar had praised Hamas’s founder as “the master of the martyrs of the resistance”, and supported the now-proscribed Jihadist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. One candidate in MCB’s upcoming Secretary-General election visited Downing Street under the previous Conservative government, in 2023. The other candidate advises British Muslims to identify primarily as Muslim, and raise a generation of “Saladin after Saladin after Saladin until you don’t know what to do with them.” Both were involved in the Muslim Vote organisation, which involved the former UK leader of Hizb ut-Tahrir. (Which also maintains a presence in the U.S.) However, neither the MCB, nor the Muslim Brotherhood itself, has been proscribed. In 2016, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee wrote in a report that, “The UK has not designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation. We agree with this stance. Some political-Islamist groups have broadly been a firewall against extremism and violence.” Who convinced them of such a dangerously naive belief?

Britain’s civil service is filled with Muslim activists, who are more likely to advocate for liaising with self-appointed “community leaders” like the MCB. As one whistleblower described it, the presence of a 700-member Islamic Network within the Home Office has a chilling effect on those who dare speak up about the risk of ignoring Islamist extremism. Connor Tomlinson has written for our Insight Series about how Home Office civil servants argued that anti-extremism body Prevent “is inherently racist because it focuses on Islamist extremism”, after they already ignored Islamists like Sir David Amess MP’s murderer, Abi Harbi Ali. Last November, they dismissed the ongoing rape gangs scandal as a “grievance narrative” invented by “right-wing extremists”. In towns like Telford, Rotherham, and Rochdale, local councils “covered up information and silenced whistle-blowers”, and “dared not act against Asian youths for fear of allegations of racism”. These gangs targeted girls for their race, calling them “white slags”, “easy meat”, and “the white enemy”. But they were also radicalised in their mosques, madrassas, and Islamic centres to prey on these girls as Kafir — non-believers. In 2017, convicted members of a Rotherham rape gang shouted “Allahu akbar” as they were led out of court. Dr. Taj Hargey, imam of the Oxford Islamic Congregation, explained how this radicalisation process occurs:

“The theology from the Mosque and the elders is to perpetuate this idea of ‘them and us’. …

“The idea is, when you can delegitimise these youngsters as being less than human and being less than equal and for you to do whatever you please, that is the basis for these men to act like that.

“There is this ideology, this interpretation of Islam which makes this possible.

“Why is virtually every single person in these grooming gangs Muslim? It seems like 95 per cent of them are. We need to look at the interconnection between Islam, promoted by the clergy and the establishment in the UK, because Islam is not promoting this reprehensible behaviour.”

When imams established an organisation, Together Against Grooming, after the Oxford trials in 2013, one told the BBC that “People were troubled by us reading the [anti-grooming] sermon and one man asked me how he could stop it being read.” There is clear continuity between the Islamist predators of the rape gangs, the radical clerics in mosques, the Jihadist groups who launder ideas through Muslim NGOs, and the government employees who given them all an audience to meet DEI requirements enshrined in legislation like the Equality Act (2010). If it weren’t for the stifling culture of political correctness, and an entrenched bureaucracy which bakes Woke identity politics into the business of state, then these extremists would have no quarter.

The lesson for the U.S. here is that liaising with self-appointed “community leaders” will only empower subversive Islamists. The Department of Justice already does this: instructing its Community Relations Service to focus on “engaging and building relationships with historically marginalized groups, including the Muslim, Sikh, and transgender communities.” In classifying Islam as a “marginalized” identity, America’s government departments are primed to treat all Muslims, and Islamist terror, with politically correct sensitivity. In its document on “Engaging and Building Partnerships with Muslim Americans”, the mantra “Our nation is enriched by its diversity” is repeated — meaning the prospect of challenging the ideas of Islam is off the table, lest you weaken the social fabric of the United States. This includes prioritising “addressing 9/11 backlash discrimination issues against Arab-Americans, Muslims, Sikhs and South Asian-Americans.”

The FBI has dedicated resources to “innovative grassroots programs in each of its 56 field offices to meet the needs of Arab-Americans, Muslims, Sikhs, South Asian-Americans, and other communities within their domains.” Its budget request for 2025 is $29.1 million — a $4.1 million increase from 2024. More resources are being spent on ensuring Muslims in the United States are not offended by the monitoring of Islamist extremism than on actually stopping it. 

In doing so, the CRS consults groups such as the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) in its Protecting Places of Worship (PPOW) forums. MPAC has been a historical target for subversion by Hamas-sympathisers the Palestine Committee, seeking “an entry point to use them to pressure Congress and the decision-makers in America.” In 2024, MPAC compared criticism of pro-Palestine protests on Qatar-funded U.S. university campuses to “a wave of anti-communist hysteria, otherwise known as the ‘red scare.’” Qatar has long harboured heads of Hamas, despite its attempts to play diplomat between the U.S., the Arab world, and Islamist groups in Afghanistan and Gaza. Only recently has Hamas’ political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh, Mousa Abu Marzook, and “dear guest” Khaled Mashal reportedly fled Doha for Algeria, Lebanon, and Iran — foreshadowing the Trump Administration brokering a return of Israeli hostages from Hamas, and resolution to the war. Their influence on American universities is not the stuff of swivel-eyed conspiracy theories, but a sober matter of fact and a national security risk. For the CRS to put MPAC on a pedestal when it pushes such propaganda puts Americans in danger. 

A Pew Research report found the Muslim Brotherhood were also involved in founding ISNA, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and the Muslim American Society (MAS). The Palestine Committee proposed using “the network of Islamic schools” run by ISNA to disseminate propaganda which would make Muslim Americans sympathetic toward Hamas. CAIR was founded in Washington DC a few months after the Committee met in Philadelphia. CAIR founder, Omar Ahmed endorsed “infiltrating the American media outlets, universities and research centers… [and] working with Islamic political organizations and the sympathetic ones”. Nihad Awad, CAIR’s executive director, met with members of the Muslim Brotherhood as recently as 2022, and, in 2024, eulogized Sheikh Abdul-Majid al-Zindani, an Al-Qaeda recruiter. Just like in the UK, Islamists use respectable-sounding Muslim activist organizations to launder radical ideas, pose as “community leaders”, and convince government departments to focus less on the threat posed by Jihadists. As Zeyno Baran wrote for The Hudson Institute, “Through engagement, the U.S. government effectively legitimizes the Islamists’ self-appointed status as representatives of Muslim community.”