There are plenty of times, in the aftermath of a terror attack, when we say “we could never have seen it coming” or “there’s nothing that could have been done to prevent it.”
The U.K. Yom Kippur synagogue attack on Thursday was not one of those times.
According to the U.K. newspaper The Guardian, Jihad al-Shamie, the terrorist in the Manchester attack that killed two, was free on bail on a rape charge after an alleged sexual attack earlier this year and had other criminal convictions.
Not only that, another U.K. newspaper, The Telegraph, reported that his father, a surgeon named Faraj al-Shamie, had used a spate of social media posts to praise the terrorist group Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks in Israel that killed about 1,200 Israelis and sparked the current war in Gaza.
He called the Hamas killers “God’s men on earth” and the murder and rape of thousands a “miracle by all standards,” The Telegraph reported.
The Guardian reported that the 35-year-old Syrian-born attacker — who was killed at the scene by responding police — was not on the radar of either U.K. domestic intelligence or counterterrorism forces.
This is 35-year-old ‘Jihad’ al Shamie, the coward who took innocent lives in Manchester today. He was a Syrian masquerading as a Brit in our country. The face of hatred ladies and gentlemen. @MahyarTousi @VeitchAeternis pic.twitter.com/soe4ApOmfy
— Rob Kiteley (@TheRobKiteley) October 2, 2025
Al-Shamie rammed a car into a crowd of Jewish worshippers outside the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue and then began stabbing people indiscriminately.
Two men — 53-year-old Adrian Daulby and 66-year-old Melvin Cravitz — were killed in the attack.
The terrorist, aptly named, apparently had a list of criminal convictions in addition to being a suspect in other acts.
The bearded Muslim man who carried out a deadly car ramming and stabbing attack at a synagogue in Manchester, England is literally named Jihad.
Jihad Al-Shamie, a Syrian immigrant who was naturalized in the UK, was shot dead after killing two and injurng four. He wore a fake… pic.twitter.com/1xurSu8jCM
— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) October 2, 2025
From The Guardian:
“Police are examining whether Shamie, who was granted British citizenship in 2006 when he was around the age of 16, was responsible for a death threat sent to a former Conservative MP in 2012. The email to John Howell came from someone calling themselves ‘Jihad Alshamie’ and said: ‘It is people like you who deserve to die.’
“Howell, who stood down as MP for Henley in 2024, said he did not know if it was the same person and he did not feel the police had taken the death threat seriously enough at the time.”
And then there’s his father’s social media actions in the wake of Oct. 7. From the Telegraph:
“Three days later on Oct 10, he appeared to question why Hamas was not receiving support from other Arab nations. He wrote: ‘Where is this so-called resistance with the Haifa rockets… May God’s curse be upon the hypocrites, the traitors pledged to a disgusting and filthy sectarian agenda – the moment of truth is inevitably coming.
“’You told me [about the] Haifa rockets… Our brothers in Palestine are publicly asking for help from anyone who still has a part of honour or humanity, but with God’s permission they will be victorious oh you who sold your religion, your honour and your humanity to the mullahs of Tehran, and whoever sells his honour, there is no hope from him… As for the Arab governments, leave them to wander blindly in their tyranny. Long live the brave men of Gaza #Palestine_is_Arab.”
“A day later, on Oct 11 2023, he again praised the Hamas invasion and called for the ‘resounding fall of a great traitor.'”
And we go back to the ultra-leftist The Guardian again, which printed this graph closer to the top of its story than that part about the death threat against Howell or the fact that the details of the alleged rape weren’t known but that it was known that al-Shamie was out on bail:
“Police said on Friday night that they believed Shamie ‘may have been influenced by extreme Islamist ideology’, but added: ‘Establishing the full circumstances of the attack is likely to take some time.’”
Yeah, it’s a mystery, all right.
The Brits are notorious for not trying to stir the pot when Islamist violence rears its ugly head in Merrie England, lest law-abiding citizens post problematic memes. (That will get them on the radar of authorities — and thrown in jail, to boot.)
However, this kind of takes the cake. A man out on bail for sexual offenses, with a father who openly praises terrorists on social media, and … we’re going to have to wait to establish motive as to why a man named “Jihad” attacked a Jewish congregation on Yom Kippur?
What, he ignored traffic signs, then began stabbing people because he was so annoyed with road laws? To not point out the obvious is absurd.
This is Britain’s problem with immigration and multiculturalism, bound up in a single story. It’s not just that the immigration floodgates have long been opened to the country. That’s bad enough. Rather, it’s the fact that when the inevitable happens, authorities scramble to cover things up and blame it on people who notice.
But therein lies the problem: People have noticed, and they’ve woken up. What the U.K. decides to do about it — and whether there’s even time left to do anything — remains to be seen.
But they can’t tell us that “we could never have seen it coming” or “there’s nothing that could have been done to prevent it.” Thursday proved that.
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