RUTHFULLY YOURS

The jihadist attack on Bourbon Street in New Orleans on January 1st by an American who converted to Islam and became an Islamist should come as no surprise.

This was not the first time that a Jihadist in the United States or Europe had used “vehicular jihad. The Islamic State (IS) appears to have “encouraged” it in 2010. IS even recommended that to cause “maximum carnage,” it be used preferably in “pedestrian only” sites.

In the US, Jihadist attacks, vehicular and other, include 9/11/2001, the Boston Marathon Bombing, the Fort Hood slayings, and the New Orleans attack {for more, see Appendix 1).

In Europe there have been at least 15 vehicular attacks, including two on Christmas markets in Germany; one on Nice’s seaside in France on July 14, 2016, and more in France, Spain, the UK , and Stockholm. There have also been countless non-vehicular jihadist attacks there , including the London Underground attacks of 2005, the slaughter at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, the murders at Paris’s Bataclan theater, among many others (see Appendix 2).

In Israel, jihadist attacks, including rammings, bombings, stabbings, shooting and rock throwing have been a way of life for more than 100 years. There were nearly 20,000 terrorist attacks in 2024 alone, according to data from the National Public Diplomacy Directorate in the Prime Minister’s Office.

Every time a jihadist attack takes place, the mainstream media often react the same way: the attack is described as “horrific,” often presented as “heinous and cowardly.” The terrorists are described by their neighbors as nice and quiet people or suffering from a some mental or drug-related disorder. Commentators describe them as “radicalized,” without ever using the word “Islam”. That the attacks were jihadist is rarely mentioned, or only briefly. Then everything gets forgotten until the next jihadist attack.

Radical Islam does not “forget”. It is on the offensive almost everywhere, every day, every minute.

The West always seems to shy away from three essentials: candor — telling the public all the facts – prevention, and the need for harsh measures.

In terms of prevention, the Biden administration, since January 2021, has released 10.8 million possibly unvetted illegal immigrants into the United States, including at least 1.7 million “gotaways” about whim we know — and about whom we know nothing. A House Judiciary Committee report from August, 2024, states that 375 illegal aliens on the U.S. government’s terrorist watch list were apprehended, and several released into the country.

The report also notes that “The terrorist threat to the homeland has skyrocketed”. The Transnational Criminal Organization, for instance, Tren de Aragua, which originated in the prisons of Venezuela, and has so far set up bases in at least 18 states , is referred to as “a major player in the criminal underworld”.

For the Biden administration, the fight against terrorism seems never to have been a priority. The administration has always had targets other than terrorists, such as Roman Catholics who attend Latin Mass; parents who protest men in women’s locker rooms; demonstrators who entered the Capitol on January 6, 2021 while police held the doors open for them, and “white supremacists“, whom the president called the “most dangerous terrorist threat” to the nation. Several months earlier, on August 26, 2022, in Bethesda, Maryland, Biden had designated his main enemy, the “MAGA Republicans”, “a threat to our very democracy” and as dangerous people resorting to “political violence”, while neglecting even to mention the Black Lives Matter 2020 “Summer of Love“, which cost taxpayers at least $2 billion and people, their life (for instance here, here and here).

Just a few weeks ago, December 12, 2024, after months of protests that incited hatred of Israel and Jews — in major American cities and on the campuses of universities, where Jewish students and professors were threatened and sometimes assaulted (such as here, here and here) — the Biden administration put in place a National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia and Anti-Arab Hate, which reported that “threats against American Muslim and Arab communities have spiked” and that “Muslim and Arab students, faculty, and staff, have been subject to violence, discrimination, hate, harassment, bullying, and online targeting.”

In many American universities, tenured professors have openly supported radical Islam for years, described Hamas as a liberation movement, supported terrorism, shown their hatred of the United States and brainwashed students. Radical imams in many mosques have incited their followers to hate and even murder Jews (here, here and here) and appear to be trying to legitimize jihad.

Masjid Bilal, the mosque frequented by New Orleans terrorist Shamsud-Din Jabbar, issued a statement on January 1 urging worshipers not to talk to police and to direct whoever might ask questions to the Islamic Society of Greater Houston and to the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR), an organization whose leaders will not condemn Islamic terrorism, and which the United Arab Emirates has designated a terrorist organization.

Despite what CAIR is called, the Biden administration has consulted it several times to define its positions on anti-Semitism.

Although it is fortunate that jihadist terrorist attacks have not been more frequent in the United States, the situation in the United States is not nearly as deadly as in Western Europe.

Journalist Melanie Philips notes that myopia about the topic of jihadist attacks is widespread and “derives from a refusal by the Western establishment to acknowledge that Islamic radicalism is rooted in Islamic theology.” Too many members of Western elites, she adds, “parrot the claim that Islam is a ‘religion of peace'”; fail to mention that the history of Islam “identifies it as a religion of war and conquest”, and that “the faithful who interpret these words literally regard it as a religious duty to conquer and Islamize the non-Islamic or not-Islamic-enough world”. The results have been visibly gruesome

Political Islam, support for Islamic terrorism and incitement to jihad – holy war — needs be squarely faced and defeated.

It is hoped that the Trump administration will allow no place for Jihad in the US or the West.

APPENDIX 1: The Unites States

Vehicular jihadist attacks: In the US, on November 28, 2016, Abdul Razak Ali Artan, a Somali refugee, drove his car into the courtyard of Ohio State University in Columbus and injured 13 people. On October 31, 2017, Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, an Uzbek national who had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, drove a rented pickup truck into cyclists and runners on “Highline,” a Hudson River Park in Lower Manhattan: eight people were killed, 13 were injured. On May 21, 2024, Asghar Ali, a Pakistani immigrant yelled “I’m gonna kill all the Jews” and tried to mow down Orthodox students and a rabbi outside a Brooklyn Jewish school; fortunately, there were no casualties. There was also a vehicular attack on November 21, 2021 by repeat offender Darrell Brooks who drove an SUV through a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Six people were killed, 62 were injured.

Non-vehicular jihadist attacks: In New Orleans, the terrorist was an Army veteran — not the first to become an Islamist murderer. U.S. Army Major Nidal Hasan killed 13 people and injuring more than 30 others on November 5, 2009, on Fort Hood military base.

Since 2000, there have been countless deadly jihadist attacks in the United States, resulting in thousands of deaths. These include the 9/11/2001 attack on the World Trade Center in New York City, Lancaster Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon in Washington DC in which nearly 3,000 people were killed and 6000 injured, not including an estimated 17,000 first responders who later suffered from diseases linked to 9/11; the Boston Marathon bombing on April 15, 2013, the Queens hatchet attack on October 23, 2014; the attack on the Curtis Culwell Center during a ‘Draw Muhammad’ cartoon art exhibit in Garland, Texas ; the attack on two military installations in Chattanooga, Tennessee on July 16, 2015, the San Bernardino attack on December 2, 2015 ; the mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida on June 12, 2016: the New York and New Jersey bombing on September 17–19, 2016. On August 12, 2022, British writer Salman Rushdie was savagely stabbed during a public lecture in Chautauqua, New York.

APPENDIX 2: Europe

Vehicular jihadist attacks: In France, on July 14, 2016, Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, a Tunisian citizen, drove a 19-tonne cargo truck into crowds celebrating Bastille Day on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice: 86 people were killed, 434 were injured. In Germany, on 19 December 2016, Anis Amri, an asylum seeker from Tunisia, drove a truck he had stolen into the Christmas market next to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at Breitscheidplatz in Berlin: 12 people were killed, 56 were injured. In Spain, on 17 August 2017, Moroccan Younes Abouyaaqoub, drove a van into pedestrians on La Rambla street in Barcelona, Catalonia, killing 13 people and injuring 130 others. In Sweden, on April 7, 2017, Uzebek Rakhmat Akilov hijacked a truck and drove it at high speed through a crowd along Drottninggatan in central Stockholm: 5 dead, 14 injured. In the UK, on 14 August 2018, Salih Khater, a refugee from Sudan, hit people with his car near the Houses of Parliament: three people were injured. In Germany again, on 20 December 2024, Taleb Al Abdulmohsen, a German of Saudi origin, drove a rented SUV into a Christmas market in Magdeburg, killing 6 people and injuring at least 299 others.

Non-vehicular jihadist attacks: In Spain, on 11 March 2004, six Islamic terrorists planted bombs in Madrid’s Atocha train station and on trains leaving the station: they killed 200 people and injured around 2,500. In the UK, on 7 July 2005, four Islamist terrorists (three British born sons of Pakistani immigrant, and a convert born in Jamaica) carried out suicide attacks targeting commuters travelling on London’s public transport. In Belgium, on 22 March, 2016, six Islamic terrorists coordinated terrorist attacks in and close to Brussels: 32 dead, 340 injured. In the UK, on 22 May 2017, Salman Abedi, a British citizen of Libyan origin, committed a suicide bombing at the exit of the Manchester Arena in Manchester: 22 dead, 1,017 injured. In Germany, on 23 August 2024, an Islamic terrorist perpetrated a knife attack in Solingen: he killed three people and wounded eight others.

France was particularly affected. On 19 March 2012, Mohammed Merah criminal of Algerian origin killed a rabbi and three children in the schoolyard of a Jewish school in Toulouse ; in the previous days he had killed two off-duty uniformed French soldiers in Montauban, a small town 30 miles North of Toulouse. On 7 January 2015, two French-born Algerian Muslim brothers, Saïd and Chérif Kouachi shot the employees and journalists of the French satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo:12 dead, 11 injured. Two days later, on 9 January 2015, Amedy Coulibaly, attacked a kosher supermarket in Porte de Vincennes, Paris, France: 5 dead, 9 injured. On 26 June 2015, Yassin Salhi, beheaded his employer, Herve Cornara, in Saint-Quentin-Fallavier, near Lyon. On 13 November 2015, several Islamist terrorists shot people inside several cafes and spectators at a concert at the Bataclan theater: 130 dead, 416 injured. On July 26, 2016, a French catholic priest, Jacques Hamel, was murdered in his church in Saint-Étienne-du-Rouvray by two Islamists. On 4 April, 2017, Sarah Halimi, a retired French doctor was tortured and killed by Kobili Traore, an immigrant from Mali, in her appartement in Paris. On 23 March, 2018, Mireille Knoll, an 85-year-old French Jewish woman and Holocaust survivor, was killed in her apartment by Yacine Mihoub, a French thug of North African origin. On 16 October 2020, Samuel Paty a French teacher, was beheaded in Éragny, a small town in the suburbs of Paris, by Abdoullakh Abouyezidovich Anzorov, a Chechen refugee. On 13 October 2023, Mohammed Mogouchkov a Russian man of Ingush origin stabbed to death Dominique Bernard, a high school teacher, in the Gambetta-Carnot secondary school in Arras, Pas-de-Calais.