By Olivia Scheck
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MANHATTAN — A recently released e-mail from the failed Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad, shed new light on the attacker's motivations this weekend.
The midnight missive, sent on February 25, 2006, four years before his attempted attack on Times Square, spoke of anger, humiliation and uncertainly.
"If something from what I wrote doesn't correspond with Quran and Sunnah," Shahzad began his 1,460 word e-mail to friends, "then I renounce it and I ask Allah's forgiveness due to my ignorance."
While Shahzad did not explicitly state plans for a terrorist attack, he questioned the efficacy of non-violent strategies.
"Friends with peaceful protest!" Shahzad wrote. "Can you tell me a way to save the oppressed? And a way to fight back when rockets are fired at us and Muslim blood flows?"
He also referred to people "clinging to one excuse that Islam does not allow innocent killings," though he added that he was "Not saying that it is right."
In addition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Shahzad expressed anger about violence towards Muslims in Palestine and Chechnya and about Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.
"It is with no doubt that we today Muslim, followers of Islam are attacked and occupied by foreign infidel forces," he argued. "Everyone knows the kind of humiliation we are faced with around that globe."
At the time the e-mail was sent, Shahzad was living a comfortable life in suburban Connecticut. He had recently taken a job as a financial analyst for the Affinion Group, a Connecticut marketing group, and was known to host barbecues on his front lawn.
But by mid-2006 Shahzad appeared to be becoming more extreme in his religious views. He stopped drinking, prayed five times a day and quoted Islamic theologians in casual conversation with friends, The New York Times reported.
He had always been critical of U.S. foreign policy, a close relative told the paper.
Two years later, this combination of religiosity and political resentment was compounded by financial strife. Shahzad told friends that he could not keep up with his mortgage and complained about his commute to work, the paper said.
“He was like, ‘Why am I paying so much for everything — why am I even here?’ ” a classmate told the Times, speaking of the months before Shahzad traveled to Pakistan to be trained by the Taliban.
The February e-mail might have been the first warning sign of Shahzad's impeding radicalism.
