Faisal Shahzad's E-Mail Charts Possible Terrorism Motive

(May 17) -- In a 2006 e-mail sent to friends, Times Square bombing suspect Faisal Shahzad seemed to lay out the motive for his alleged embrace of violence against the United States.

"Everyone knows the Muslim country bows down to pressure from west," Shahzad wrote on Feb. 25, 2006, in an e-mail to friends that was released by the FBI. "Everyone knows the kind of humiliation we are faced with around the globe."

The long e-mail, which is peppered with Koranic verses, illuminates Shahzad's mind-set at a key juncture in his life in the U.S.

This undated photo shows Faisal Shahzad, right, and his wife Huma Mian.

Orkut.com/AP

Faisal Shahzad, here in an undated photo with his wife, wrote in 2006 that Muslims faced "humiliation" around the world.

By 2006, nearly eight years after he first arrived in America, Shahzad had settled into a seemingly comfortable middle-class American life. He was 26 years old, married to a Pakistani-American woman and had a $50,000-a-year job as a financial analyst at Elizabeth Arden, a cosmetics company. He owned a two-story home in Shelton, Conn., and drove a black Mercedes-Benz.

But it was during this period that Shahzad seemed to drift further toward a stricter practice of his religion. In statements to the The New York Times, friends said Shahzad had quit drinking alcohol and begun praying five times a day in area mosques. Increasingly, they noticed, he expressed admiration for mujahedin fighters in places like Chechnya and his native Pakistan.

Again and again, Shahzad cited what he perceived to be the indignities suffered by Muslims around the world at the hands of Western powers like the U.S., such as the plight of the Palestinians, the war in Iraq and the mocking of the Prophet Muhammad in a series of Danish cartoons.

"The crusade has already started against Islam and Muslims with cartoons of our beloved Prophet PBUH as War drums," Shahzad wrote, using an abbreviation for the phrase "peace be upon him."

Though Shahzad cites the "one excuse that Islam does not allow innocent killings," he ultimately seemed to see no alternative to violence in righting the injustice he perceived.

"Can you tell me a way to save the oppressed?" Shahzad asked rhetorically. "And a way to fight back when rockets are fired at us and Muslim blood flows?"