Although there is a lot wrong with the Matthew Livelsberger case out of Colorado Springs, the Shamsud Din Jabbar killer from New Orleans, where both terrorists took action on January 1st, 2025, to provoke a terrorist incident.  I am very suspicious of Livelsberger because he was found with a gunshot to the head in a car that can drive itself—so given that he has been a Trump supporter in the past, it’s not quite the same case of Islamic radicalism that we saw from New Orleans.  In both cases, we are probably dealing with third-party characters who used the misery of these two people to perform the terrorist actions, leaving people to ask a lot of questions, such as what is going on at Fort Bragg that causes all these ex-military people to have a switch go off in their head and to turn into terrorists.  There is a lot there to consider.  But the primary question, which is a global problem, is why young people are attracted to radical Islam, and how does that religion generate the kind of hate that causes suicide bombers intent to inflict mass carnage against entirely innocent people?  As I watched hours and hours of explanations about how to deal with the problem of terrorists running around in a free society, it was evident that everyone was missing the main point in the matter: an irreconcilable matter that allows terrible people to use broken young men to perform their dirty work while the real perpetrators hide in secret societies and law firms plotting the demise of the world in a way that they can profit off of.  I think we are seeing just the beginning of this kind of psychological war, and terror incidents like this, unfortunately, have to be expected.  Many evil people have settled into government power, and it won’t be easy to dislodge them.  And ahead of Trump coming back into office, this network of scum bags will be complex at work to terrorize people into not supporting President Trump’s government reforms, any way possible.   

Before its release date, I read Jordan Peterson’s excellent new book, We Who Wrestle with God, over Thanksgiving weekend 2024, and I thought it was just fantastic.  I like what Peterson is doing with applying psychology to the construction of the Bible and its meaning as a helpful articulation of the Western World and why it’s so successful while other places aren’t.  It supports a long premise of mine that started essentially with the great Joseph Campbell, where a society’s mythology determines essentially the quality of life for the people in it.  Someone sent me an advance copy to review, so by the time of these terrorist events at the start of 2025, I had time to think about the psychological side of social constructs that peek behind the curtain of organized religion in a way that I believe is at the heart of the problem.  But nobody wants to look at Islam with quite the same kind of analysis, which then causes us to not have answers to the questions as to why Islam is a religion that tends to generate a radical element that wants to kill people.  And why are they so much different than the Christian or Jewish version of some of the same Biblical characters?  Given that, I think it is time we admit to ourselves why young terrorists like Shamsud Din Jabbar or the guy from Colorado Springs would entertain such a thought as to become a car bomber and blow up one of Elon Musk’s Cybertrucks in front of the incoming President’s excellent hotel in Las Vegas.  And it comes down to the heart of Islam in a psychological way.  Not a spiritual one.  So when we ask the questions as to why, the first and most obvious place to look is at the story of Ishmael and Isaac, both sons of Abraham, but one was cast away and became the central figure of Islam.  The other became the central figure of the Jews and Christian faith.  It all flows from the institution of marriage to the core foundations of all Western civilization.

As I pointed out within minutes of both terrorist attacks to everyone asking me questions about them, both of the terrorists had problems with the women in their lives and had been rejected.  And to a man, that rejection from a family member can be devastating.  Also, as a primary consideration, Islam allows for the marriage of up to 4 wives so long as the husband can show that he can support them all.  So, Islam has a very different view of what a marriage is than what is traditionally considered biblical.  When Abraham couldn’t have children with his wife, Sarah talked him into having a son with her hand servant from Egypt, Hagar.  She soon gave birth to Ishmael.  But God stepped in and made it so Sarah could give birth, and she soon brought forth Isaac.  And Abraham, under God’s counsel, cast away his firstborn son and his mother and made Isaac his favorite.  This act of being rejected by the father is at the heart of the matter among all Muslims, including Barack Obama.  They all have in common worldwide: broken families and a sense of being rejected by orthodox Western Culture.  That was the primary problem during the Crusade period as well.  Not that all Muslims are from broken families.  However, as an identity, you find that fear of rejection and their anger at Western civilization is the root of all their actions and narratives.  Islam was built around the first son of Abraham, Ishmael. At the same time, Isaac was considered the father’s favorite because he was born within the institution of marriage. 

So, of course, young men like  Shamsud Din Jabbar are going to be drawn to religions that have at their foundation an explanation, or an off-ramp, for why society has rejected them.  And it doesn’t take long for such young men to start signing up for ISIS terrorist groups as a discharge for the pain in their lives.  Not that any of that is an excuse.  But it does explain why people who feel they are losing at life are so quickly radicalized by a religion that features at its heart the rejected son of Abraham, who was born from the bad decision of the couple when faced with the crises of not being able to have children themselves.  Then, once they could, they rejected the illicit birth that occurred outside of institutionalized marriage.  That would also explain why Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the world, and it is proposed to have 3 billion people by 2060.  There are a lot of broken people in the world who do not have the advantage of being born to a loving mother and father under the warm blanket of institutionalized marriage as the West sees it.  And everywhere in the world that rebels against the notion of Western law and thought, they struggle with various degrees of Marxism, collective-based political movements that give the same kind of cover to broken people that the Muslim faith does.  Remember what I have been saying about Obama’s mom for all these years?  She was a lot like Hagar.  And like Ishmael, Obama had daddy issues.  And to hide that pain from themselves and the world, they become terrorists in lots of ways to fight back against the pain that haunts them.  In that way, they become monsters, and religious fights against them dominate our news stories.  But at its heart, it all comes down to affection for a father, and one was rejected because of an illicit relationship from which all of Islam was built to explain.  And the other became the father of all Jewish faith and the emergence of Christianity.  The hatred then becomes a kind of Cain and Able story where one brother wants to kill the other for all the jealousies that come from accepted institutionalism or to be cast aside and shunned from the love of a father where respect was so desperately wanted.  And is it that simple?  I think so.  And yes, there are lots of horrible characters out there who take advantage of these broken people and weaponize them for their causes because they are easy to manipulate in their depleted state.  And before you know it, they are blowing themselves up and trying to impose fear on what they think is a society that rejected them.  Then, with all the violence, power is distributed across the world in ways that many can’t get their minds wrapped around because they are so evil and audacious.  Ultimately, it is constructed out of jealousy and hurt feelings that trace back to why Ishmael and his mother were cast aside to fend for themselves.

Rich Hoffman

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