Social media posts by Corpus Christi naval air station shooter Adam Alsahli indicate he supported key figures linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and attended a school in Saudi Arabia that has a decades long link with Al-Qaida figures.
Alsahli opened fire at the air station’s North Gate May 21. A guard was shot, but survived with minor injuries thanks to the bulletproof vest she was wearing. Guards returned fire, killing Alsahli.
Alsahli publicly declared his support for al-Qaida last November.
This marks the second attack by an al-Qaida linked figure against a U.S. naval installation on U.S. soil since December. Saudi Air Force 2nd Lt. Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani went on a shooting rampage at Naval Air Station Pensacola, where he was attending a program, killing three U.S. sailors. Alshamrani had repeatedly communicated with al-Qaida operatives, FBI officials revealed earlier this month.He moved to the United States from Syria in 2014, according to Todd Bensman, a former manager with the Texas Department of Public Safety and Counterterrorism who currently serves as a national security senior fellow with the Center for Immigration Studies. Alsahli obtained U.S. citizenship while living abroad because his father was a naturalized American.
His Linkedin profile shows he attended Umm al-Qura University in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, a Salafist Islamic school with a long history of inspiring al-Qaida leaders. Muhammad Qutb, brother of Muslim Brotherhood ideologue Sayyid Qutb, taught at the school for years, inspiring his students with his brother’s jihadist ideology. Muhammad Qutb instructed his students that Muslims should hate infidels and have enmity toward them.
Muhammad Qutb inspired bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and Safar al-Hawali, who also taught at Umm al-Qura University. Al-Hawali, a student of Muhammad Qutb’s, became an early bin Laden supporter. He accused the West of trying to undermine Islamic society from within after American troops were deployed in Saudi Arabia after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. This same event triggered bin Laden’s animosity against the United States.
Al-Hawali published a book in 2018 called “Muslims and Western Civilization” that renewed the call for jihad against the West, including suicide attacks. The book’s publication led Saudi authorities to arrest him that year.
“It is part of jihad to revive martyrdom operations that spite the enemy greatly. They are kind of infiltrating the enemy and they display the courage of Muslims and their love of martyrdom, and they terrorize the hearts of their enemies,” Al-Hawali’s book said.
In an Arabic Twitter post last January, Alsahli quoted a statement Hawali made after 9/11.
“The moral spirit is stronger than military technology,” it says. “The huge armies can defeat it with hundreds of those seeking Heaven. Technology no matter how developed cannot resist the moral spirit of the believers.”Alsahli also complained about Saudi Arabia’s detention of Salman al-Odah, a close associate of al-Hawali’s in the Muslim Brotherhood-inspired Saudi Awakening Movement of the early 1990s. Al-Odah spread anti-Western and anti-Semitic ideas as a leader of that movement. He also was a mentor of bin Laden’s.
“May Allah Bless him and grant him peace and his membership in the International Union of Muslim Scholars and the European Council for Fatwa. Do the scholars silence this crude audacity?” Alsahli wrote about Al-Odah.
Al-Odah was arrested in 2018 on 37 charges, including incitement against the Saudi monarchy and involvement in the creation of Syria’s former al-Qaida affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra.
Brotherhood-linked groups including the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) also have called for al-Odah’s release.
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