New Orleans attacker’s recordings reveal extreme religious views on music, sex, intoxicants

The suspect of the New Orleans attack had expressed extreme religious views nearly a year before he allegedly killed 14 people and injured dozens.

The accused, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who drove his pickup truck with an Islamic State (IS) flag through a crowd on New Year’s Day, posted his views through recordings on SoundCloud, according to a Guardian report.

On the platform, an account under the name of Jabbar posted three audios of about 20 minutes detailing his extreme religious views on music, sex, intoxicants and other pleasures, which he believed were evils that deserved destruction.

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The voice in the recordings matched that of Jabbar’s in the video promoting his real-estate business. Jabbar was shot dead by police following Wednesday’s (Jan 1) attack on Bourbon Street.

The extreme notions of IS or those who sympathise with the terrorist group have been widely rejected by Muslim scholars. Jabbar had previously been accused of engaging in acts which he condemned in the audios, including spousal abuse and drunk driving.

“His crime is the latest example of why cruel, merciless, bottom-feeding extremist groups have been rejected by the overwhelming majority of the Muslim world – from Islamic scholars to mosques, to organizations and to individual Muslims,” the Council on American-Islamic Relations said in a statement on Thursday (Jan 2).

Attacker's extreme religious views

The recordings of Jabbar that surfaced recently have revealed that he had been openly expressing extremist religious views by about February 2024. He had been following various religious accounts on the platform.

In one of the recordings, he claimed that poetry, like rapping, can lure people into “things that God has made forbidden to us: the intoxicants.” He added that “music entices us to illicit sex, vulgarity, violence, betrayal, arrogance, burglary, cheating, ingratitude to our spouses or others in general,” and also suggested that music was “Satan’s voice.”

The 42-year-old US-born citizen, who recently lived in Houston, also said that one particular rap song was responsible for three murders in his neighbourhood shortly after it was released in the early 2000s.

In another recording, he said, “Allah … says, ‘Save those who believe and do righteous deeds … These will have the good tidings of paradise with all its gifts and pleasures, without there ever being a break in them.”

President Joe Biden had said that during the briefing, the FBI informed him and his aides that “mere hours before the attack,” Jabbar had “posted videos on social media indicating that he was inspired by IS, expressing a desire to kill”.

What happened in New Orleans attack?

On Wednesday (Jan 1), a man, identified as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, intentionally rammed a vehicle into a crowd during the New Year’s celebrations in New Orleans's Bourbon Street. The attack killed at least 14 people and injured dozens of others.

The FBI has confirmed that the attack was an act of terrorism. The suspect, a US citizen from Texas, died in a shootout with police.

(With inputs from agencies)