The two white supremacist terrorists who murdered three innocent Muslims at the San Diego Islamic Center in southern California in May 2026 left behind a 75-page racist manifesto entitled “The New Crusade: Sons of Tarrant”. The not-so-subtle title of their manifesto clearly proves that they viewed themselves as the ideological “sons” of the Christchurch mosque shooter who killed 51 people and injured 89 in New Zealand in March 2019.
In their 75-page manifesto, the San Diego shooters also referred to the Christchurch gunman as “our biggest inspiration”, and they also copied him by live-streaming their attack at San Diego’s largest mosque. The attack killed 3 Muslim men named Amin Abdullah, Mansour Kaziha, and Nadir Awad—who were all rightfully hailed as heroes for preventing the gunmen from getting near the 150 young Muslim schoolchildren who were locked down nearby in their classrooms.
A police officers stands guard on the rooftop of the Islamic Center of San Diego © IMAGO / Nelvin C. Cepeda
Some of the video screenshots showed the two San Diego gunmen both wearing camouflage uniforms adorned with white supremacist symbols and shooting guns emblazoned with Neo-Nazi military symbols (just like the Christchurch shooter during his own livestreamed attack in 2019 as well).
Both Christchurch and San Diego shooters wore clothes with neo-Nazi symbols like the “Black Sun” (also known as “sonnenrad”) which was seen on the bulletproof vest worn by the Christchurch murderer and also visible on the clothes of the San Diego killers. The Los Angeles Times also reported that their 75-page racist manifesto “espoused hate toward Muslims, Jews, Black people and Latinos and the LGBTQ+ community” and identified one of their social media accounts which “idolized school shootings, the white nationalism movement and neo-Nazi terrorism, and were flush with [right-wing] memes.”
A 2020 report by the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) in The Hague, Netherlands outlined how the Christchurch terrorist’s manifesto has been used in subsequent years by other right-wing mass murderers in what they called the “increasing internationalization” of right-wing terrorism. “By not only committing attacks but publishing manifestos to be shared and celebrated by the extremist masses, terrorists are issuing a call-to-arms for the next generation [of violent white supremacists] to rise up and join the fight,” the ICCT report concluded.
Just like the San Diego shooters idolized the Christchurch gunman before them, the New Zealand gunman idolized as one of his “heroes” the infamous Norwegian anti-Muslim terrorist named Anders Breivik, who brutally murdered 77 people in 2011 in Norway’s worst terrorist attack. Eight years before Christchurch, the Norwegian terrorist’s own 1,500-page racist manifesto called “2083—A European Declaration of Independence” quoted from other prominent white supremacists who perpetuated the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory where brown and black-skinned Muslim immigrants posed an existential demographic threat to white Christian Western societies moving forward.
White supremacist Brenton Tarrant, was sentenced to jail for life without parole last year for the murder of 51 people and attempted murder of 40 others at two mosques in Christchurch on 15 March 2019 © IMAGO/ZUMA Press Wire
The “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory was made famous in modern times by a right-wing French writer named Renaud Camus who argued that “elites” in Europe (his thinly veiled euphemism for Jewish people) were working behind-the-scenes to replace white Christian Europe with brown-skinned Muslim immigrants. This conspiracy theory has now become central to electoral platforms and political slogans across the European far-right which actively works to fuel racialized religious paranoia against non-white Muslims across Europe. Once truly a fringe conspiracy theory, the phrase “Great Replacement” is now regularly referenced publicly by right-wing Western political figures, including U.S. president Donald Trump, former Italian interior minister Matteo Salvini, TV personality Tucker Carlson, and many more.
A 2020 report by the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) in The Hague, Netherlands outlined how the Christchurch terrorist’s manifesto has been used in subsequent years by other right-wing mass murderers in what they called the “increasing internationalization” of right-wing terrorism.
The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a British think tank specializing in extremism, found that organized far-right networks across the globe are promoting this “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory to the extent that references to it online have doubled in the last decade, with more than 1,500,000 mentions on Twitter alone. The report also noted that the conspiracy theory had received increased attention worldwide after featuring prominently in the 2019 manifesto of the Christchurch, New Zealand mosque gunman.
Muslim communities across the world—from Christchurch, New Zealand to San Diego, California—have now been victims of weaponized Islamophobia because of right-wing white supremacists and their anti-Muslim conspiracy theories. If Western governments fail to protect their religious minority communities, we might be seeing future white supremacists cite the San Diego mosque shooters as their ideological fathers in a never-ending cycle of racialized religious paranoia for the foreseeable future.
__
Featured Image: Mass murderer, Anders Breivik, at the Norwegian court. The court rejected his second bid for parole. © IMAGO/Javad Parsa
Author
Arsalan Iftikhar
Arsalan Iftikhar is an international human rights lawyer, founder of TheMuslimGuy.com and former senior fellow at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. He is the author of several books, including Fear of a Muslim Planet and Scapegoats which former US President Jimmy Carter called “an important book that shows Islamophobia must be addressed urgently.”
