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ISIS-inspired New Orleans terrorist, Shamsud-Din Jabbar kept a bomb-making workbench in his Texas trailer home where a Quran was left open on a page about “slaying” in the name of Allah.
Jabbar’s north Houston home was filled with chemical residue and chemical bottles, while an inventory of items seized by the FBI included a long list of compounds used in bomb-making.
His Quran was propped on a bookshelf and open to a passage that reads, “they fight in Allah’s cause, and slay and are slain; a promise binding…”
The passage, Verse 9:111, expounds on Muslims’ responsibility to k!ll Allah’s enemies, and to be willing to d!e for that mission in return for eternity in paradise.
Numerous books about Islam were also on the shelf and around the home, while a prayer rug was rolled up nearby.
FBI officials on Thursday, Jan. 2, said Jabbar posted five disturbing videos on Facebook on his drive from Houston to New Orleans just hours before he unleashed carnage on Bourbon Street, leaving 14 innocent pedestrians dead.
In the first disturbing video posted at 1:29 a.m., the US Army veteran said he had initially planned on murd£ring his family and friends, but changed his mind over concerns that the resulting media coverage wouldn’t focus on the “war between the believers and disbelievers,” FBI counterterrorism official Chris Raia said.
In other videos, he said he had joined ISIS “before this summer” and showed off his last will and testament.
Investigators confirmed that Jabbar, 42, was ideologically aligned with ISIS and that he specifically chose Bourbon Street as the target of his monstrous act of terror.
However, they have yet to piece together what precisely brought about his radicalization.
Jabbar, an IT whiz, was on a legitimate career path until apparently falling on hard times both personally and financially.
He had two failed marriages and faced mounting debt before he murd£red 14 innocent pedestrians and injured dozens more with an explosive-laden Ford F-150 truck bearing the black flag of the jihadist group.
Born in Texas, Jabbar joined the Army in 2006, serving at bases in Alaska and North Carolina before being deployed in 2009 to Afghanistan, where he served for 11 months, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Although it isn’t believed he served in a combat role, he was promoted to staff sergeant sometime in 2013.
Before leaving the Army as an active-duty soldier two years later, Jabbar picked up a pair of disciplinary actions for driving under the influence, according to the outlet.
After five years as a reservist, he was honorably discharged and before long was studying computer information systems at Georgia State University while simultaneously working as a senior cloud analyst at Big 4 consulting firm Accenture, the outlet writes, citing an online résumé he posted.
Then from 2019 to 2021, he worked at EY — also a Big 4 firm — as a cloud consulting manager before landing a gig at yet another top consultancy, Deloitte, where he earned a salary of $125,000.
Meanwhile, Jabbar’s family life was in turmoil.
His first wife — from whom he separated in 2012 — got custody of the couple’s children, while he was ordered to pay child support as well as for their medical insurance.
He remarried in 2017, but three years later, his second marriage hit the skids, and his ex was granted a restraining order that prohibited Jabbar from sending her obscene or threatening messages, threatening “bodily injury” to her or the couple’s child, the outlet reported.
During the divorce proceedings — which came after a failed attempt by the couple to reconcile — Jabbar provided a statement to the court claiming financial hardship, with $7,500 a month in income and just shy of $9,000 in liabilities.
His younger brother, 24-year-old Abdur Jabbar, described him as “a sweetheart really, a nice guy, a friend, really smart, caring.”
“This is more some type of radicalization, not religion,” the brother told the New York Times.
