The suspected terrorist who drove his car through a crowd in New Orleans on New Year’s Day also targeted American Catholics with bombs. While most media outlets noted that Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the U.S. Army veteran who killed 14 and injured 35 more when he drove a truck through a crowd on Bourbon Street, had planted at least two explosive devices in ice coolers, veteran reporter Raymond Arroyo observed that one of those explosives was placed outside the St. Louis Catholic Cathedral in the French Quarter.
January 1 is a “holy day of obligation” in the Catholic calendar, meaning that Catholics have a moral obligation to attend Mass on that day. Catholic and conservative political commentator Jack Posobiec stated, “They were going to kill Catholics as they attended church.”
In comments to The Washington Stand, Family Research Council Senior Fellow Meg Kilgannon, a Catholic, recounted, “I just heard a report on CNN with their version of extensive background on what we know so far about the terrorist attack in New Orleans.” She continued, “They described a second bomb as ‘blocks away’ from the first site, not mentioning the fact that it was in front of a Catholic Church. Would the same omission have occurred if a non-Christian house of worship had been involved?”
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Kilgannon explained, “Christ’s coming to the world as a baby is such a beautiful gift to the world and a profound contrast to the barbaric acts that were designed to terrorize Americans. We expect as much from radical jihadis, and I hope future reporting will include information about the targeting of Catholics.” She added, “The mainstream media could begin to repair their reputation by honestly and completely covering who is victimized by these events, even as investigations uncover more about the perpetrators.”
Although representatives of the FBI were initially hesitant to label the attack a terrorist act, Deputy Assistant Director Christopher Raia of the Bureau’s Counterterrorism Division confirmed that it was a terrorist attack inspired by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terrorist organization. “As you know, we recovered an ISIS flag from the back of the vehicle,” Raia said. He added, “Jabbar declared his support for the terrorist group on social media, as I stated before, as he made his way to New Orleans.” The mosque that Jabbar attended near his home in Houston, Texas, instructed attendees to “not respond” to inquiries from either the media or law enforcement.
The attack in New Orleans follows a similar attack in Germany on 20 December, when Taleb Jawad Al-Abdulmohsen drove an SUV through a crowd at the Christmas market in Magdeburg, killing an estimated five people, including one child, and injuring as many as 235 more. The Saudi-born Abdulmohsen had entered Germany legally in 2006 and was granted asylum in 2016. He had previously been investigated and fined by police for making violent threats. The Saudi Arabian government had previously warned German authorities of the threat posed by Abdulmohsen, who was wanted in Saudi Arabia on charges of terrorism and human trafficking.
LifeNews Note: S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.
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