Introducing Shamsud-Din Jabbar’s Imam

It is almost certain that the Muslim who murdered 14 people and wounded 35 in New Orleans on New Year’s Day attended the Masjid Bilal, located in the northern Houston community where he lived. The imam of that mosque, Eiad Soudan, according to the Jerusalem Post, “has accused Jews of using usury to exploit and take control of the economy wherever they went.” Christine Douglass-Williams wrote about this here, and more on Jabbar’s imam, who deserves his own FBI investigation, can be found here: “Imam at mosque connected to New Orleans terrorist says Jews exploit usury to dominate economies,” Jerusalem Post, January 3, 2025:

An imam at Masjid Bilal, a mosque in the northern Houston community where New Orleans terrorist Shamsud-Din Jabbar lived, accused Jews of using usury to exploit and take control of the economy wherever they went, according to video footage published by the Middle East Media Research Institute on X/Twitter on Thursday.

Masjid Bilal is one of 20 Islamic Centers run by The Islamic Society of Greater Houston (ISGH), according to The Daily Mail.

“Imagine, in Europe, what was happening to the Banu Israil [Jews] there? As we said, [Jews were] killed, destroyed, persecuted. Now, the question is, why?” Imam Eiad Soudan asked in footage published by MEMRI. “Why does the whole world want them to stay in Palestine?”…

The whole world does not want the Jews “to stay in Palestine.” In the UK, France, Germany, the US, indeed throughout the EU, in Australia and New Zealand, there are no efforts to” keep the Jews” in Palestine (sic); most Western countries want their Jewish citizens to remain, and would like more such ideal immigrants, with their scientific and entrepreneurial skills, and intellectual achievements.

Soudan wants his followers at the mosque to believe that “the world” supports Israel only because it wants the country to take in all the Jews whom no one wants in their own countries. To which one could reply that the whole world does not “support” Israel, as one can see from the anti-Israel resolutions passed by the UN General Assembly — more resolutions against Israel are passed by that body than the total number of resolutions passed against the other 192 countries put together. Those who support Israel do so not because they want to “get rid of their Jews” and send them off to “Palestine,” but because they recognize the historic right of the Jews to resurrect a Jewish state in their ancient homeland, where Jews have lived for 3500 years.

“[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,” Soudan said.

“That is why the other countries don’t want them back. So when they support them, they are not supporting them because they love them. It’s like: ‘Please stay there, we’ll do whatever you want, stay there, don’t come back.’”

Soudan continued, reciting a line from chapter 5, verse 64 of the Quran, which refers to Jews who were at odds with the Muslims.

“And they strive to spread corruption in the land. And Allah does not like corruptors,” MEMRI cited the imam as saying in Arabic.

Referencing Hitler in his statements 

Continuing in English, Soudan referred to Hitler’s treatment of the Jews.

“In the First World War — Germany won or lost? Lost. Until this guy, Hitler, with the nice mustache, he [came into] power, and we all know what he did,” Soudan said. “And, by the way, Hitler hated the Banu Israil so bad, because of the economy thing, they were in control of the economy, but not only that, they used to consider them a lower level of citizen. And they used to believe that German blood was above every other blood. Hitler did not only kill many of the Banu Israil, by the way. So those who say that only the Banu Israil paid the price — everybody paid the price, they say thousands of Muslims were killed.”…

So Hitler, according to Imam Soudan, killed the Jews “because of the economy thing.” But he didn’t just kill rich Jews, who, supposedly, were in “control of the economy.” He killed millions of impoverished Jews in Poland and western Russia and the Balkans. Imam Soudan wants to remind us that non-Jews, including “thousands of Muslims,” were killed by the Nazis. Some Muslims from the Maghreb and from India fought with both French and English forces against the Nazis. But Muslims also served in the Waffen-SS brigades composed of Bosnian Muslims that the leader of the Palestinian Arabs, Hajj Amin el -Husseini, managed to raise for the head of the SS, his friend Heinrich Himmler. Hajj Amin el-Husseini spent the war years in Germany, making pro-Nazi broadcasts to Arab audiences.