As 2025 began with an act of domestic terrorism, many news outlets have turned to the Ford School's Javed Ali for insights on the matter. Ali spoke with BBC News, MSNBC, and WXYZ, to name a few, about the Jihadist-inspired attack in New Orleans on New Year's Day. The suspect, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, was a U.S. Army Veteran who drove a truck onto a New Orleans sidewalk killing 14. Read a selection of hius comments below:
“ISIS threat will stick around ‘for a long time’” MSNBC, January 5, 2025 - Ali spoke with MSNBC and assured that even though ISIS has changed over the past decade, "the ideology still remains, persists, and endures... It's not surprising to see this rash of ISIS either inspired attacks like the one we had in New Orleans... and directed and enabled attacks."
“Security barriers removed for repairs before New Orleans attack” BBC, January 2, 2025 - Javed Ali spoke with BBC offering new perspectives on the recent New Orleans attack. He was asked to comment on the absence of regular security barriers in the area stating, "It's too difficult to say for certain whether the New Orleans bollards [security barriers] being in place would have prevented such an incident... There must have been a lot of luck involved," Ali added. "That's unfortunately what happens in these types of attacks."
“New Orleans Terrorist, Lone Wolf says FBI” ABC Australia, January 2, 2025 - ABC Australia asked Ali whether he believed Jabbar only recently began plotting the attacks. Ali shared, “I can tell you fairly confidently that [terrorist/extremist radicalization] almost never happens quickly. It usually takes some period of time at an individual level, and we’re talking months if not years… It almost never happens in days or weeks, and then that’s the separate phase of mobilizing to violence can be shorter and I think that’s what people are talking about.”
“New Orleans attack mirrors global pattern of using vehicles as terror weapons” Axios, January 2, 2025 - Ali told Axios that ISIS' emergence presented a “very significant philosophical shift for jihadist operations." He also noted that attackers are encouraged to use "whatever means they could.”
“FBI investigates New Orleans attacker's connections to extremism” WBUR, January 2, 2025 - Videos of the New Orleans suspect pledging allegiance to ISIS has emerged. Ali told WBUR that “This seems to fit the pattern of other jihadist and more recently ISIS-inspired homegrown extremists in the United States and other parts of the world. So, even with the posting of the videos or uploading of the videos prior to the attack, that is usually what happens in these kinds of homegrown attacks." Ali urged further caution that there are still unknown pieces of Jabbar's ties to ISIS. "What we don’t know is whether ISIS in Iraq and Syria or other parts of the enterprise, whether they’ve acknowledged that pledge of allegiance from Jabbar at this point.” He claimed “still parts of the [jihadist] ideology remains and parts of the enterprise are still viable… We don’t know exactly when Jabbar got seduced by the ISIS ideology but it almost doesn’t matter because he proclaimed his allegiance to the group and he carried out the attack on behalf of the group.”
“New Orleans attack: Car ramming a tactic long encouraged by ISIS leadership, says expert” Channel News Asia, January 2, 2025 - Ali on the use of vehicle attacks as a jihadist method claimed that “by 2014 and 2015 there was actually guidance from very senior ISIS operational figures for people around the world who believed in the ISIS ideology to basically use any means of attack at their disposal to conduct attacks on behalf of the group or in the name of the group. And then very shortly after those messages were sent out we started to see these vehicle ramming attacks or vehicle assaults.”
“Ensuring public safety during large public gatherings” WILX, January 2, 2025 - Ali shared that law enforcement is often relying on citizens to remain aware to counter terrorism. "In the aftermath of every one of these homegrown attacks, what usually comes out is that people around the perpetrator of the attack say, ‘you know, something was off but in hindsight, I didn’t know what to make of it.'"
“Deliberate, methodical & lethal.' Local counterterrorism & security experts discuss New Orleans attack” WXYZ, January 1, 2025 - Javed Ali told WXYZ that he considers the New Orleans attacks “Deliberate, methodical, and lethal." He went on to discuss the impact the attack has had on other large public events that are scheduled to follow. "In the aftermath of a major terrorist attack, we never really canceled a high-profile sporting event, and now it’s happened. There are other high-profile events that are going to happen with a lot of security around them: the Electoral College certification on January 6, the inauguration of President Trump on January 20th, and those have already been designated as National Security Special Events so the security is going to be pretty high around those and it will be for the Superbowl as well.”
