The New Year’s Day attack in New Orleans, which claimed the lives of 15 people and left dozens more injured, has given rise to a new wave of anti-Islamic sentiment in the U.S.
On Wednesday, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) identified the perpetrator as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old Army veteran born in Texas. The bureau said that an ISIS flag was located inside the vehicle used and that Jabbar posted videos declaring his support for the organization only moments before driving into a crowd of revelers on Bourbon Street in the city’s French Quarter.
Exemplifying a trend that followed other instances of Islamic extremism—from 9/11 to Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack on Israel—prominent voices have jumped on the incident, using the attacker’s reported radical religious affiliations to criticize not only Islam, but also decry the presence of Muslims in the U.S.
“Cruel, merciless, bottom-feeding extremist groups want us all to turn on one another and be afraid,” Corey Saylor, research and advocacy director at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), told Newsweek. “The best response is to stand together and rally around New Orleans, showing all such extremists that their vision of the world is garbage.”
Anti-Islam Sentiment Surges in U.S. After New Orleans Attack
Anti-Islam Sentiment Surges in U.S. After New Orleans Attack
Photo Illustration by Newsweek/AP
What Have Trump and MAGA Said About the Attack?
President-elect Donald Trump took to Truth Social on Thursday to blame the attack on “the Biden ‘Open Border’s Policy.'”
“I said, many times during Rallies, and elsewhere, that Radical Islamic Terrorism, and other forms of violent crime, will become so bad in America that it will become hard to even imagine or believe,” Trump wrote. “That time has come, only worse than ever imagined.”
Florida state senator and 2025 Congressional hopeful Randy Fine described the attack on X as an example of “Muslim terror,” before stating: “It is high time to deal with this fundamentally broken and dangerous culture.”
Richard Grenell, an ally of Trump tapped for a key foreign policy role in the next administration, rebuffed Fine’s comments on X, writing: “They are Radicals. The Radicals must be defeated. Muslims call them Radicals, too. You aren’t helping. There’s this thing called the First Amendment which guarantees religious freedoms.”
The Social Media Backlash
Islam is currently a trending topic on X, with nearly 400,000 posts, many of these expressing negative sentiments.
“Islam has no place in America. That’s a plain fact,” one account with over a million followers posted on January 1.
“Islamic extremist…… You mean people who actually follow the Qurans teaching?” Wrote UFC fighter Sean Strickland. “Islam contributes nothing to the world besides violence and oppression. It is not compatible with America and freedom.” The post, which has received over 116,000 likes, was followed by a call for Islam to “stay in Islamic countries.”
Beyond the general anti-Muslim expressions on social media, Islamic organizations have been subjected to unsolicited anonymous insults and threatening messages following the New Year’s Day attack.
An official at CAIR shared with Newsweek the sort of messages the organization has received.
“Be a real shame if a bunch of terrorist pieces of s*** got deported as soon as Trump comes back,” one read, sent from a seemingly bespoke email address with the name kill_yourself_lol.
Anti-Islamic Feeling in the United States
The flurry of anti-Islamic rhetoric is a common refrain following attacks involving Muslim perpetrators.
The events of September 11 led to a nationwide surge in violence and hate crimes targeting individuals of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and Arab descent, as well as those mistakenly perceived as Muslim.
Following the Hamas attacks on October 7, similarly, CAIR said that reported incidents of anti-Muslim discrimination had risen 69 percent in the first six months of 2024 compared to the same period the year before. This coincided with antisemitic incidents in the U.S. reaching record highs, according to a report from the Anti-Defamation League.
Police cordon off the intersection of Canal Street and Bourbon Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana, on January 1, 2025. 15 were killed in the attack, which has led to a wave…
Police cordon off the intersection of Canal Street and Bourbon Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana, on January 1, 2025. 15 were killed in the attack, which has led to a wave of anti-Muslim posts on social media.
Matthew Hinton/AFP via Getty Images
“Our priority remains standing with New Orleans in its incomprehensible tragedy,” Saylor, of CAIR, told Newsweek when asked if the organization feared this latest surge of anti-Islamic rhetoric could turn into actual violence. “May God comfort the families of the victims, heal the injured and protect humanity from those who dare to commit such cowardly acts of mass violence.”
However, Saylor said that the anticipates the “unprecedented wave of Islamophobia” already witnessed this year in the U.S. to continue.
In response to such fears, the Biden administration unveiled the National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia and Anti-Arab Hate in December, which lays out plans to partner with “all levels of government, civil society, and the private sector” to increase awareness of the risks and improve safety and security for these members of society.
The president-elect’s link between the incumbent administration’s border policies and the New Orleans attack raises the possibility that Trump could once again implement a travel ban targeting immigration from Muslim-majority countries, similar to the one enacted in 2017.
Do you have a story we should be covering? Do you have any questions about this article? Contact LiveNews@newsweek.com.
Anti-Islam Sentiment Surges in US After New Orleans Attack
