How Jihadism Takes Root in Liberal Democracies

Look no further than the case of Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, a naturalized U.S. citizen and Islamic State supporter who on March 12 entered a classroom of ROTC students at Virginia’s Old Dominion University and opened fire, killing the professor, Lt. Col. Brandon Shah, and injuring two others. In doing so, he completed a mission 10 years—and one prison sentence—in the making. But the lethal attack also serves as a reminder that violent Islamists in America still pose a threat despite the mixed fortunes of the international terrorist group from which they draw inspiration and guidance.

Jalloh’s first direct involvement with jihadism—an interpretation of Islam which prescribes violence to achieve the establishment of an Islamic state—began in his mid-20s, during a 2015 trip to his native Sierra Leone. He was taken there by his father, who had become increasingly concerned about his son after he abruptly ended a nearly six-year career as a Virginia National Guardsman, a decision Jalloh later claimed had been inspired by the lectures of American al-Qaeda recruiter Anwar al-Awlaki. By the mid-2010s, ISIS was the new terrorist game in town, having superseded al-Qaeda as the most attractive choice for American extremists in large part due to the rise of its caliphate in Iraq and Syria. Upon arriving in Sierra Leone, Jalloh found himself in another region where the group’s influence was growing. He contacted ISIS members in neighboring Nigeria and joined a convoy of recruits bound for a recently established ISIS stronghold in Libya. Jalloh backed out of the convoy before it reached Libya for reasons that remain unclear, and by late 2015 had traveled back to the United States.